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COPYRIGHT DEPOSITi 



GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 



God's Little Children 

Their Nature 
and Religious Training 

FOR 

Kindergarten and Primary Teachers 

BY 

IONE PRATT HARTFORD 

Kindergartner of St. Bartholomew's Parish House Sunday School 
New York 




PUBLISHED FOR 

The New York Sunday School Commission, Inc. 

BY 

The Young Churchman Co. 

MILWAUKEE, WIS. 

1916 



-^ 






COPYRIGHT BY 

THE YOUNG CHURCHMAN CO. 
1916 



SEP -I 1916 



3CI.A437482 



To 

My Mother 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I. — Child Natuee : Infancy and the In- 
stinctive Basis 1 

What Physiology Teaches Us — Growth in Height 
and in Weight — First Transitional Period — 
What Infancy Is — Child Study Imperative — 
Temperamental Types — Child's Debt to Hered- 
ity — Instincts Defined — Their Order of Appear- 
ance — The Collecting Instinct — The Baser In- 
stincts — Stages of Child Development. 

CHAPTER II. — Child Nature: Self-Activity and 

the Senses 13 

Play — Play and Self -Expression — Progressive 
Stages of Natural Play — Imitation — Imitation 
and Morality — Suggestibility and Credulity — 
The "Gateways" to the Mind — Moral Aspect of 
the Senses — Touch, Sight, Hearing — Concrete 
versus Symbolic. 

CHAPTER III. — Child Nature: Development of 

the Intellect 24 

Memory — Types of Memory — When True Memory 
Begins — Retentiveness — Recall — Ideas of Time 
and Space — Imagination — Animism — Imagina- 
tion, the Builder of Ideals — Persons Admired — 
Qualities Admired — How the Child Thinks — 
The Causal Idea — Our Response. 

CHAPTER IV. — Child Nature : Development of the 

Emotions 38 

The Child's Fears — Their Sources — Imagination 
and Fear — "Signs" — Faults of Little Children — 



viii GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

Lying and Its Causes — Love and Sympathy — 
Other Traits — Childish Justice — Knowing the 
Child. 

CHAPTER V. — Child's Religious Nature and the 

Cubbiculum 49 

Universality of Religious Conceptions — The 
Child's God — His Interest in Stories — In the 
Bible — Teaching the Fatherhood of God — In- 
struction Material for the Kindergarten — For 
Primary Grades — Topical Arrangement — Sugges- 
tions from Various Sources. 

CHAPTER VI.— The Quest of a Textbook - - - 60 
Types of Textbooks — Underlying Principle of 
the Modern Textbook — Difficulties in the Way of 
Making a Choice — Suggestion Not Prescription 
— Tests to be Met — Handwork and Games — 
Teacher's Helps. 

CHAPTER VII.— Methods of Teaching - - - - 67 
The Opening Circle — Real Function of Sunday 
School Teaching — Self Activity the Keynote of 
Modern Methods — Houses of Childhood — Froe- 
belian Method — Kindergarten "Playthings" — 
"Psychologizing" Sunday School Methods — The 
Instruments of Technique — Objective Methods in 
Primary Grades. 

CHAPTER VIIL— The Teacheb's Genebal Pbe- 

PABEDNESS 74 

Importance of Sunday School Teaching — Qualifi- 
cations Necessary to Success — Elements of Per- 
sonality — Avoiding the Ruts. 

CHAPTER IX. — Pbepabation of the Pabticulab 

Lesson ----- 78 

The Time — The Programme as a Whole — Steps 
in Teaching — How to Present the Lesson — The 
Story — The Teacher's Perspective — Gaining In- 
sight — "Hidden Pictures" — Other Preliminaries. 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER X. — Preparation of the Paeticulae Les- 
son — {Continued) 88 

Title of the Story — Its Essential Elements — De- 
vices to Heighten Effect — Why Not Memorize? — 
Charm of the Story Told — Cultivating One's 
Native Resources — Other Steps in Preparation — 
Ordering and Arranging the Room. 

CHAPTER XI.— Teaching the Lesson 98 

Apperception — What the Six-year-old Knows — 
Value of Informal Conversation — The Question 
— The Child as Teacher — How to Secure Atten- 
tion. 

CHAPTER XII. — Teaching the Lesson — (Con- 
tinued) 106 

Approaching the New Lesson — Concreteness Es- 
sential — Models a Practical Help — Telling the 
Story — Easter Story Told by the Children — Asso- 
ciation of Ideas — Teaching the Easter Hymn — 
Other Hymns Taught — Maintaining Order. 

CHAPTER XIIL— Doing Side of the Leabning Pro- 
cess 118 

Habit the Conserver — Expressional Activity in 
the Sunday School — Related to the Lessons — 
Kinds of Handwork Applicable — Drawing — Use 
of Pictures — Pictures Related to Self-Expression 
— Printing and Writing — The Dramatic Ten- 
dency Utilized. 

CHAPTER XIV. — Self Expression in Service and 

in Worship 130 

Applying the Lessons — The Font Roll — Chil- 
dren's Gifts — Special Gifts — Stimulating the 
Missionary Spirit by Giving — The Birthday Cele- 
bration — Learning to Rejoice with others — The 
Child's Faith — Praise and Reverence — Prayer — 
The Attitude Toward Prayer. 



PREFACE 

THKEE deep-rooted convictions underlie what fol- 
lows: (1) Each child has an individuality neces- 
sary for the teacher to know. (2) The whole child goes 
to Sunday-school. (3) The successful Sunday-school 
teacher recognizes the physical and intellectual needs 
and limitations of her children in her plans for the 
development of their spiritual nature. With these 
thoughts in mind, guided by the light of personal ex- 
perience, by extensive reading, and by observation of 
the work of others, the writer has tried to give such aid 
as will facilitate the task of parents and teachers of 
children under nine or ten years old. 

To all who have contributed to this little book by 
their example, or by their spoken or written word, 
indebtedness is acknowledged. But I am particularly 
grateful for the advice and criticisms of my late hus- 
band, Mr. Herbert Hartford, whose confidence and 
never-failing interest in my work were a constant 
source of encouragement to me. 

Ione Pratt Hartford. 



FOREWORD 

KINDERGARTEN and Primary teachers will wel- 
come a book to guide them in their fascinating but 
difficult task. There are other books which serve as 
guides in the higher grades, or which cover the whole 
field of child study and method, but none, so far as we 
know, that specializes upon the Kindergarten and Pri- 
mary child. This Mrs. Hartford's book does. In "God's 
Little Children: Their Nature and Religious Train- 
ing," she singles out this child from the mass of chil- 
dren and enables us to see him as a separate individual. 
She details the methods peculiarly adapted to this early 
age, and helps us to distinguish between these and the 
more general methods. She sets forth the special aim 
that should govern the Kindergarten and Primary 
teacher, as contrasted with the general aim of Sunday- 
school work of which the special aim is a constituent 
part. All this the teacher in these lower grades has 
hitherto had to do for herself. It is now done for her, 
and done far better than she could hope to do it, unless 
she herself were a specialist. 

This book is not a system of Lessons for use in the 
Sunday-school class, or one to be used in connection 
with the children at all. It is rather a book for the 
general preparation of the teacher, either by herself 
alone or in training classes, in anticipation of her work. 
By a careful study of it no teacher can fail to be better 
equipped for the work that lies before her. By a thor- 



xiv GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

ough mastery of it every teacher must come to her task 
with greater intelligence, discrimination, enthusiasm 
and success. 

Mrs. Hartford does not write primarily from a 
theoretical point of view, although she is evidently 
familiar with it, but from the standpoint of long ex- 
perience as a Kindergarten and Primary teacher in St. 
Andrew's and St. Bartholomew's Parish House Sunday- 
schools, New York, and her book finds its chief value 
in the fact that it is the product of true experience. 
She writes pleasantly and clearly and, best of all, con- 
vincingly, with the same helpfulness to parent as to 
teacher. 

"We heartily commend her book to all who would 
bring their teaching up to a higher degree of excellence. 
We wish it might be included in the necessary prepara- 
tion of those who are looking forward to Kindergarten 
and Primary work. Charles H. Boynton. 



FOREWORD 



"Come, let us live with our children." — Froebel. 

"And so you may be polite to a child, and pretend 
to appreciate his point of view; but, unless you really 
do put yourself to the trouble of understanding him, 
unless you throw yourself, by the exercise of imagina- 
tion, into his world, you will not succeed in being his 
friend. To be his friend means an effort on your part. 
It means that you must divest yourself of your own 
mental habit, and, for the time being, adopt his. And 
no nice phrases, no gifts of money, sweets, or toys, can 
take the place of this effort and this sacrifice of self. 
With five minutes of genuine surrender to him, you 
can win more of his esteem and gratitude than five hun- 
dred pounds would buy. His notion of real goodwill is 
the imaginative sharing of his feelings, a convinced 
participation in his pains and pleasures." 

Arnold Bennett. 



BOOKS OF REFERENCE 

The following books are recommended for reading in 
connection with this text. All of these books may be pur- 
chased from the New York Sunday School Commission, Inc., 
73 Fifth Ave., New York, or The Young Churchman Co., 
Milwaukee, Wis. 

Of General Interest 

Adler. The Moral Instruction of Children (D. Appleton & 

Co. $1.50). 
Coe. Education in Religion and Morals (Revell, $1.35). 
Dewey. Ethical Principles Underlying Education (Uni. of 

Chicago Press. $1.50). 
Froebel. The Education of Man (D. Appleton & Co. $1.50). 
Forbush. The Coming Generation (D. Appleton & Co. 

$1.50). 
Raymont. The Use of the Bible in the Education of the 

Young (Longmans, Green, & Co. $E25). 
Smith. Religious Education (Young Churchman Co. 

$2.00). 

Outlines of Child Study 

Harrison. A Study of Child Nature (Chicago Kindergarten 

College. $1.00). 
Oppenheim. The Development of the Child (The Macmil- 

lan Co. $1.25). 
Pyle. The Outlines of Educational Psychology (Warwick 

&York). 
Tanner. The Child, His Thinking, Feeling and Doing 

(Rand McNally. $1.00). 
Taylor. The Study of the Child (D. Appleton & Co. $1.25) . 



GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 



Concerning Methods 



Dewey. Schools of To-day ($1.50). 

Froebel. Pedagogics of the Kindergarten (D. Appleton & 

Co. $1.50). 
Montessori. The Montessori Method (Frederick A. Stokes 

Co. $1.75). 

Concerning the Teachee 

Palmer. The Ideal Teacher (Houghton, Mifflin Co. 35 

cents ) . 
Mark. The Teacher and the Child (Revell, 75 cents). 
Weigle. The Pupil and Teacher (Doran, 50 cents). 

Concerning the Story 

Bailey. For the Story Teller (Milton Bradley Co. $1.50). 

Bryant. How to Tell Stories to Children (Houghton, Mif- 
flin Co. $1.00). 

Houghton. Telling Bible Stories (Scribner. $1.25). 

St. John. Stories and Story Telling (Pilgrim Press, 50 
cents ) . 

Concerning the Teaching of the Lesson 

Betts. The Recitation (Houghton, Mifflin Co. 60 cents). 
Du Bois. The Point of Contact in Teaching ( Dodd Mead 

& Co. 75 cents). 
Fitch. The Art of Securing Attention (15 cents). 

The Art of Holding Attention (Flanagan & Co. 50 

cents ) . 
James. Talks to Teachers (Henry Holt & Co. $1.50). 

Concerning Expressional Activities 

Bailey & Lewis. Daily Program of Gift and Occupation 
Work (Milton Bradley Co. 50 cents). 

Dodds. Primary Handwork (The Macmillan Co. 75 cents). 

Littlefield. Handwork in the Sunday School (S. S. Times. 
$1.00). 

Smith. Prayers and Prai&es for the Church School. 

Wiebe. Paradise of Childhood ( Milton Bradley Co. $2.00 ) . 



CHAPTER I 

CHILD NATURE: INFANCY AND THE 
INSTINCTIVE BASIS 

THE history of education discloses the names of 
many earnest men who have sought to find the 
child's proper place in the scheme of things, as well 
as the best methods and the best means for fitting 
him to occupy it. But it has remained for scientific 
research and the card catalogue to lift children en- 
tirely out of the obscurity to which the old saw, 
"Children should be seen, not heard/' formerly con- 
signed them, and to make them the center of observa- 
tion and study by all who are intelligently interested 
in child welfare. The modern Sunday-school teacher, 
like her fellow-workers in other fields, has become a 
student of child-nature, of instruction materials, and 
of methods of teaching. She is not content with the 
sentimental description of the child, which calls him 
a "little flower" or a "little man," but turns to the 
sciences for more exact information and a deeper 
insight. 

What Physiology Teaches Us 

Physiology, biology, and psychology are each con- 
tributing to bring about a better understanding of 
the meaning of childhood and a better knowledge of 



2 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

its laws of growth and development. The physiol- 
ogist tells ns the child is not a "little man." From 
him we learn that the proportions of the various parts 
of the body at different stages of growth differ from 
their proportions at maturity ; for example, the height 
of an infant's head is half that of the adult's; the 
length of its body is one-third that of the adult's; 
and its arms and legs are, respectively, one-fourth 
and one-fifth as long as in maturity. There are 
differences, also, in the size of the vital organs, in 
the chemical structure of bones, blood, and nerves, 
and in the physiological processes — circulation, res- 
piration, and digestion. 

Growth In Height and Weight 

Observations on a very extended scale show that 
growth does not proceed at a uniform and stead) 7 rate 
throughout the years of childhood. A child's weight 
at the end of the first year is, normally, three times 
its weight at birth; the average boy at twelve months 
weighs slightly less than twenty-two pounds, the 
average girl not quite twenty-one and a half pounds. 
At six and a half years the average weight of boys 
is less than forty-six pounds, of girls it is under forty- 
four pounds; at nine and a half years the average 
boy's weight is not quite sixty pounds, and the aver- 
age girl's not quite fifty-eight. Further study of this 
subject leads to the conclusion that at certain periods 
increase in weight is accelerated, at other times re- 
tarded, while a comparative study of the changing 
heights of children, year by year, indicates that here, 



CHILD NATURE 3 

too, seasons of rapid growth precede seasons of slow 
growth; that when the increase in weight is greatest 
the gain in height is slight. 

The First Transitional Period 

The years between six and nine, with both boys 
and girls, are marked by decided physical and mental 
changes. The appearance of the second teeth is an 
outward sign of the passing of babyhood, and the 
change in mentality warns us that the brain is rapidly 
developing and that new connections are being made 
between the nerve centers. One writer says, "This 
wild animal period, which demands outdoor beds at 
home and loosened seats at school, is doubtless the 
era of a struggle for a physical constitution. All the 
endurance, the reserve power, the tenacity of later 
years is being stored up during these treasure-house 
years between five and twelve. During the last three 
or four of these years, vitality is a little less exuberant. 
They might be called the special period of restful 
growth. Mentally, they are somewhat stolid and 
silent/' 

What Infancy Is 

The message of biology is that this period of 
immaturity, so charming in many respects, is a season 
of plasticity — of capacity for being molded physically 
and mentally — wisely provided by nature to enable 
humanity to fit itself for the business of life. In 
this formative period of childhood such adjustments 
must be made between the individual and his en- 
vironment as will result in his ability to control self, 



4 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

and to bend to his uses the great forces of nature. As 
our civilization becomes constantly more complex, 
there is increasing need for a prolonged infancy. 

Biologists have also given us a recapitulation 
theory, based upon the doctrine of evolution, that has 
made us recognize that growth is a development from 
within from a lower plane to a higher one; that the 
life of the individual, no less than the progress of 
the race and of all humanity, presents a continuous 
unfolding from lower to more advanced forms and 
abilities, each later one dependent for its fulness and 
perfection upon the way in which the preceding period 
has been lived. A childhood denied the joys that are its 
rightful inheritance makes for a barren manhood and 
womanhood. Each phase — infancy, childhood, youth, 
manhood, old age — has its own peculiar physical and 
mental characteristics ; its own powers and limitations ; 
its own capacities for joy and sorrow that set it apart 
from all the others. Each is distinct from the rest. 
"Yet the boy has not become a boy/' says Froebel, 
"nor has the youth become a youth, by reaching a 
certain age, but only by having lived through child- 
hood, and, further on, through boyhood, true to the 
requirements of his mind, his feelings, and his body; 
similarly, adult man has not become an adult man 
by reaching a certain age, but only by faithfully satis- 
fying the requirements of his childhood, boyhood, and 
youth." 

Child Study Imperative 

S. Paul said, "When I was a child, I spake as a 
child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child" ; 
and because the statement is universal in its applica- 



CHILD NATURE 5 

tion, it is our duty to learn from what the child says 
and does what he things about, and by what steps he 
approaches rational understanding. The importance 
of real child-study, therefore, cannot be doubted ; and 
the conscientious person very soon realizes the impos- 
sibility of classifying all the mental, moral, and spir- 
itual elements of every child's nature on the basis of 
facts gleaned from observation of only a limited num- 
ber of children. Even where external conditions are 
similar there is that variation, due to differences in 
physical and mental inheritance, that limits capacity 
for intellectual and spiritual growth. 

Temperamental Types 

Recognition of this fact has led to many attempts 
to classify persons with reference to temperament — 
the prevailing mental bias or disposition due to bodily 
constitution. In a general way, people may be desig- 
nated as being of the motor or active type, or of the 
sedentary or sessile type. Each of these classes may 
be subdivided — the latter, into the corpulent-vital 
and the speculative or reflective-sedentary; the for- 
mer, into muscular-motor and nervous or ideo-motor. 
There was a time (it has not quite passed) when the 
phlegmatic child with round face, pale skin, and 
very light hair — so difficult to excite that one almost 
felt the need of high explosives to move him — was 
not only called dull, but was censured for a condition 
outside his control. The same methods were (and, 
too often, still are) used with him and with the 
quick "ideo-motor" child; and when tests and ex- 
amination papers showed unsatisfactory results the 



6 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

cause was not always rightly assigned. But with 
wider knowledge new vistas of responsibility are 
opened; learning takes its rightful place in the edu- 
cational process, and efficiency and morality are es- 
timated at their true value in the child's life; old 
methods are replaced by new ones that make a 
stronger appeal to muscular-motor and to phlegmatic 
children. 

In religious training, too, temperamental differ- 
ences are significant to the educator. The phlegmatic 
nature, though not easily excited, is usually sympa- 
thetic and likely to be mindful of the rights of 
others, while the speculative mind — not at first 
readily withdrawn from its own musings — may be 
led to express itself in splendidly unselfish service. 
Muscular-motor and nervous-motor children are 
neither precocious nor dull intellectually, and both 
can be trained to great efficiency and high morality. 

The Child's Debt to Heredity 

In the long ages since man's upward progress 
began the race has passed through many stages, every 
one of which with its environing conditions has left 
its impress, and helped to direct the next step for- 
ward. On the physical side, there is a systematic 
progression from the lowest and simplest forms of 
cell life to the higher and more complex ones, each 
earlier state leaving a hereditary mark upon the later, 
more complicated structures. Man's intellectual and 
spiritual nature has advanced similarly from prim- 



CHILD NATURE 7 

itive ideals and attainments to those that are to-day 
the finest flower of our civilization. 

It is reasonable to believe that in each of these 
successive steps mankind learned some particular les- 
son, a definite way of reacting upon the peculiar con- 
ditions it had to face, and that the instincts and ten- 
dencies that are a part of our racial inheritance are 
a record of its struggles. Life spells activity — re- 
sponse to incentive from within or without. Con- 
trasting the well-ordered behavior of the kindergarten 
child with the aimless movements of the helpless in- 
fant, one feels surprise at the improvement shown in 
so short a time. How has he learned to do so many 
things so quickly? Some of his acts are the result of 
direct teaching, others of imitation, either conscious 
or unconscious; but neither dictation nor imitation 
explains the baby's first efforts to creep or to walk — 
an inner cause, one that impels to action without any 
consciousness of ends, is at work here. And it is this 
innate urgency, or impulse, or instinct, that is the 
germ of all our life of action. 

Instincts Defined 

James writes, "Instinct is usually defined as the 
faculty of acting in such a way as to produce certain 
ends without foresight of the ends, and without pre- 
vious education in the performance." A simpler def- 
inition of instincts, which expresses at the same time 
the theory of their origin, is this: "Instincts are 
definite, complex forms of inherited response to def- 
inite stimuli." 

The child has been called a "bundle of instincts," 



8 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

and justly it would seem, for we are told that lie has 
a larger equipment of them than any other mammal. 
Many of these native reactions have little direct in- 
terest for the teacher; for example, those that are 
purely reflex in character, such as grasping at any- 
thing that touches the hand ; or those that are purely 
transitory, as creeping. But instincts that have an 
educational value, and especially those that arise and 
are strongest in the earlier years of school life, com- 
pel our attention. It is most important that both 
parents and teachers be able to recognize in the child's 
exhibitions the various instincts of which they are 
the evidence, since it is by their training and growth 
into right habits that the proper building up of per- 
sonality is insured. 

Their Order of Appearance 

Quite in harmony with the theory that in its 
mental development the child passes through stages 
analogous to the successive upward steps in the prog- 
ress of the race is the fact that the various instincts 
appear in definite order, become fixed habits of action 
under favorable conditions and training, or, on the 
other hand, are by inhibition or substitution forever 
lost. Oh, that parents could see in the angry crying 
of their tiny child the germ of that horrid selfishness 
which, if not checked, may grow into malice and 
hatred, and even vent itself in murder; and in his 
sweet trustfulness recognize the tendency to confide 
in father and mother — a precious tendency which, 
far too often, discouraged by lack of sympathy or 
by harshness, is turned into secretiveness and slyness, 



CHILD NATURE 9 

to the child's serious detriment in the later adolescent 
period. 

There is still much to learn about instincts and 
the sequence of their appearance. Owing to the com- 
plexity of human nature and the far-reaching in- 
fluence of environment, it is impossible to fix upon 
any age as the absolute limit for the appearance of 
a particular instinct in individual cases, though we 
can approximate the time when they will generally 
show themselves under ordinary normal conditions. 
Instincts are said to be nascent when they are grow- 
ing in strength, and this is the time to feed the 
useful ones. If a child shows the awakening social 
instinct in a desire to be helpful to mother, encourage 
him by giving him something to do. To put him off 
until a more convenient time may be fatal ; when the 
child himself shows us that the time is ripe, let us 
take advantage of his good impulses. 

The Collecting Instinct 

By way of illustration, take the collecting instinct 
which makes its appearance before the child is three 
years old. By the age of six it is well defined; it 
reaches its culmination by ten, and before fourteen 
years any useful reactions or habits growing out of 
the impulse must be clinched. During these years 
the motives for collecting and the classes of objects 
assembled will change many times. Childish satis- 
faction growing out of the activity will express itself 
differently from year to year. The child's earliest 
motives are very superficial, depending upon the 
merest fancies: the brightness of a bit of glass, the 



10 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

smoothness of a round pebble attracts; later, imita- 
tion steps in and there is a blind desire to equal his 
fellows in gathering many objects of a class. Cannot 
you recall your string of buttons, or the bag of 
marbles that was your joy and pride? In time, in- 
terest in making collections for their own sake wanes 
and disappears, and the survival of the instinct is 
threatened unless wise suggestion and guidance set 
the youthful mind in quest of material of real value 
— pictures, minerals, botanical specimens, what not — 
related to the daily life and school work of the child. 

The Baser Instincts 

"When tendencies to unlovely actions or feelings 
first present themselves they too must be suitably met. 
Sometimes an act is sporadic, so to speak, and is 
performed but once; simply to let it pass without 
comment is then the best treatment. This method 
is most effective with young children. One thing 
needs to be remembered: no instinct should be re- 
pressed without suggesting a better activity to take 
its place. Physics teaches that nature abhors a 
vacuum, and the mental and spiritual life presents 
a parallel, strikingly illustrated in the well-known 
New Testament story found in the twelfth chapter 
of S. Matthew — the story of the seven other spirits 
that entered the "empty, swept, and garnished" house. 

Stages of Child Development 

Dr. Alford Butler has conveniently named the 
first three years of the child's life the Age of Instinct; 
the second three, the Age of Impulse ; the third three, 



CHILD NATURE 11 

the Age of Imitation. These terms are practically 
self-explanatory. The child comes into the world 
without knowledge or self-consciousness. The day 
in which he discovers his hands marks an epoch in 
his intellectual development. All his earliest responses 
to the stimuli of his surroundings are instinctive, in- 
herited, unlearned reactions. All his wants and needs 
appear to be physical, but, notwithstanding this, he 
is already absorbing impressions of the things and 
persons about him; and Froebel says the religious 
spirit "will hardly, in later years, rise to full vigorous 
life if it has not grown up with man from his in- 
fancy" ; and that it is "the fruit of earlier and earliest 
religious example on the part of the parents, even 
when the child does not seem to notice it or to under- 
stand it. Indeed, this is the case with all living par- 
ental example." 

The work of achieving a personality begins with 
the dawn of self -consciousness ; the feelings assert 
themselves in well-defined likes and dislikes. At first 
reason and forethought are so rudimentary as to be 
practically negligible as motive forces, but impulse 
gradually replaces instinct, and passing fancies govern 
the child's actions from moment to moment. With 
the strengthening of the social instinct comes the 
desire to do as others are doing, and imitation becomes 
a factor in conduct. 

Grading Children According to Age 

Classifying children in accordance with the scheme 
adopted by thoroughly graded schools, we should place 
those three or four to six years of age in the kinder- 



12 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

garten or beginners' department of the Church 
School; those from six to eight or nine years old in 
the primary department. In speaking of the char- 
acteristics peculiar to these years, it is to be under- 
stood that due allowance must be made for the varia- 
tions in individuals. Age is a matter of disposition 
as well as of years; of race, of health, of sex, and of 
environment. Other things being equal, girls are 
mentally older than boys; Slavic children older than 
Latins, and the latter older than Teutonic children; 
while the reflective, careful, anxious child is mentally 
older than the heedless, lively one, who tears his way 
through life from one activity to another without 
thought of to-morrow, or of its consequences. 



CHAPTER II 

CHILD NATURE: SELF-ACTIVITY AND 
THE SENSES 

SELF-ACTIVITY, energy working from within, 
originating in self, is characteristic of all living 
things. Without it there can be no adjustment be- 
tween the individual and his environment; without 
it the plant could not absorb moisture from the soil, 
the animal would be inert as the stone, and man would 
starve physically and intellectually. 

The child's earliest unconscious obedience to the 
commands of self -activity is heard in the infant's tiny 
cries, and seen in his stretchings and kickings. Use 
promotes growth, and as the muscles are exercised 
they steadily become stronger, and greater control of 
them is gained. The kindergarten child should be 
able to do many things for himself, but frequently 
the practice of home and school keeps him dependent 
because of our unwillingness to await the results of 
his clumsy, stumbling efforts. As the nervous system 
develops, these crude attempts are transformed into 
movements of greater exactness and nicety, and the 
child is capable of more sustained efforts; but the 
transition from kindergarten to primary standards of 
requirement should be by easy steps. 

Among the child's most obvious characteristics on 
entering the kindergarten are his restlessness and 



14 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

lack of physical control. Kestlessness, in the sense 
of a desire to be busy, is a sign of good health; but 
wriggling and squirming and inability to fix atten- 
tion and effort are another matter, and may be due 
to fatigue, to low vitality, or to malnutrition. Plainly, 
it is our duty under such circumstances to seek for 
causes and to apply remedies, if possible ; not to pro- 
vide an outlet for the discharge of his muscular energy 
is a crime against the child and his years. 

Play 

When the baby coos and smiles, when he tries to 
catch a shadow or a sunbeam on the wall, when he 
throws his spoon upon the floor, we say that he is 
playing. As he grows older his manipulations of 
toys, kindergarten materials, and books come under 
the same head. All the outward manifestations of 
the child's spontaneous self-activity, accompanied by 
the joy of being, may be summed up in that one 
word — play. Froebel says of the plays of childhood 
that they "are the germinal leaves of all later life; 
for the whole man is developed and shown in these, 
in his tenderest dispositions, in his innermost ten- 
dencies." Happily, and unconsciously, the child is 
developing as he builds his little world in play. It 
would be a long step forward if the school environ- 
ment could be so manipulated that the child would 
more often go to his work there with the same zest 
and energy that he spends upon his play. If the 
Spirit of Playfulness, of which play is a kind of 
precipitate, ruled in the school-room, the atmosphere 
of heaviness and inelasticity would be banished, and 



CHILD NATURE 15 

every normal child would be aquiver with enthusiasm : 
a condition that might be attained if our methods of 
instruction were brought into true harmony with child 
nature. 

Play and Self-Expression 

The phenomena of play may be interpreted as 
activity growing out of excess energy, directed by the 
child's spontaneous interests and impulses. Though 
sometimes spoken of as a separate instinct, play seems 
rather to give opportunity for self-expression through 
many ripening instincts. Imitation and imagination 
enter in prominently; and the running games, such 
as prisoner's base and fox and hounds, for example, 
tent and cave games, and others, are believed by some 
psychologists to be instinctive ; the natural out-flow 
of energy through brain-channels established by nec- 
essity when the race was in its infancy. 

The child's free play is an index to the needs and 
conditions of his developing body, and a reflection of 
his physical and mental environment. The infant 
finds pleasure in rattling a newspaper or tearing it 
to bits, and all the time he is making experiments 
and exercising muscles. The three-year-old is satis- 
fied to dig, or to make mud-pies; he is extremely 
individualistic, and often selfish. What he wants most 
of all is a tool to work with, and freedom to carry out 
his intentions. Sometimes he asks for the approval 
of grown-ups, but more often all he asks is to be left 
undisturbed; and, pray, do not think you make him 
happy by doing his work for him ! Occasionally he 
leaves his absorbing occupations for a while, and in 
company with other children becomes a shopkeeper, 



16 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

or a soldier with a stick for a sword; but let another 
child interpose his will and the little group loses its 
attraction. 

Progressive Stages of Natural Play 

George Ellsworth Johnson, in his book on "Edu- 
cation by Plays and Games/' says that until the close 
of the third year the natural plays of the child are 
such as to aid in the development of his various 
powers. They consist of movements of the head, 
body, and limbs ; experimenting with the senses ; get- 
ting control of the body ; "the plays constantly widen- 
ing the field of motor activity, sense perception, mem- 
ory, imitation, and speech." 

The natural plays of the second period are to a 
large extent an outgrowth of those of the first period ; 
with children of five or six there is more conscious 
imitation, a demand for more action, more drama. 
Organized games are still not generally attractive, 
though ring games make an appeal, and those of the 
kindergarten are undoubtedly enjoyed because, added 
to their social background, is their appeal to the 
child as an individual. The spontaneous play activ- 
ities of this period are characterized by ceaseless rep- 
etition and impersonation, with very little purpose 
running through them. The toy interest centers 
about common objects susceptible of much handling, 
much putting together and taking-apart ; about dolls 
and teddy-bears ; and about toys that are of practical 
use in digging and hauling, in playing house and 
school. 

Coming to children of primary age, we find that 
at seven years the majority are at play with others of 



CHILD NATURE 17 

their kind ; very few seek the companionship of adults 
in preference, and not many choose to play alone. 
Informal, unorganized plays are giving way to games 
governed by set rules, though the individualistic ten- 
dency is still in evidence, and every one plays for 
himself. There is perhaps a little decline in selfish- 
ness, but not enough to make truly cooperative games 
popular; personal wishes are not yet sunk in the de- 
sire for a common end or good. With the quickening 
of the competitive spirit at the age of eight or nine 
many plays and occupations are "predominantly mere 
practice and trials of strength, and aim simply at 
display of strength." Eunning games, such as hide- 
and-seek, become increasingly popular; with girls 
from seven to ten, the interest in doll games is at its 
height. But wider knowledge and more utilitarian 
ideas come with years, and seek an outlet in purpose- 
ful employment: the boy gets out his set of carpen- 
ter's tools with the idea of really making something, 
and the girl sews clothes for her doll, and tries her 
hand at embroidering a centerpiece for Mother's 
Christmas gift. 

To the teacher of young children play is a subject 
of vital importance, since it is so valuable as a means 
of education in the years of later infancy. To the 
child it is a realizing medium for the life about him, 
enriching his nature mentally and emotionally, and 
preparing him for the broader life of maturity. 

Imitation 

At first the imitative instinct is little more than 
an unconscious impulse to reproduce an act, but later 



18 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

becomes a persistent effort with a "well-defined aim 
that is not satisfied until the desired end is secured. 
In this way, principally, the child learns to feed him- 
self, to dress himself, and to perform many little acts 
of courtesy and helpfulness. His earliest imitations 
are of the sounds and motions of those about him; 
unusual mannerisms are almost certain to catch his 
eye; any physical deformity or abnormality is sure 
to be seized upon ; and only when he grows older does 
his capacity to make distinctions between thought 
and action lead to his appropriation of the ideas of 
others. Even in children of school age imitation is 
frequently unconscious. Many a teacher has found, 
to her chagrin, half the class imitating an absurd or 
unnecessary motion of hers, such as nodding the head 
to mark emphasis. 

Until the age of three or four, children most often 
imitate the activities of adults, and to a less degree 
those of animals and other children; by eight years 
of age, animals are seldom imitated, children more 
often than animals, and adults more frequently 
than at the age of three. By the age of eight, when 
imitation is strongest, most children are able to separ- 
ate the idea from the act and to imitate the former, 
using it in such combinations of circumstances as 
may suit their purposes; motor activities are more 
frequently imitated than at any previous time, but 
there is a falling-off from the imitation of speech, 
which is more general in those years in which the 
child is making rapid progress in building his vocab- 
ulary. Between the years of three and eight there is 



CHILD NATURE 19 

a growing tendency to imitate action and speech to- 
gether. The dramatic plays of children are an outlet 
for this impulse. 

Imitation and Morality 

But the most important office of imitation is the 
part it plays in the development of the moral life. 
The child accepts the standards of accustomed sur- 
roundings without question. He reacts to them as he 
sees those about him doing. If blows and angry 
voices and profanity are the rule when things go 
wrong, the child will resort to these measures when 
thwarted. It is only as he becomes more intelligent 
and gains an insight into other conditions than those 
familiar in his own home, that he begins to criticize 
the latter. 

Other Useful Traits 

Credulity and suggestibility are marked in early 
childhood; the younger the child the more implicitly 
he believes whatever is told him, and the more readily 
he comes under the sway of suggestion. The results 
of very interesting experiments made to measure the 
power of suggestion against the direct evidence of the 
senses indicate that all children, depending upon their 
age and general intelligence, are more or less ready to 
accept without reflection ideas unobtrusively called 
up by other associated ideas. It is generally held 
that the age at which children are most amenable to 
suggestion is about eight or nine years— when the 
spirit of criticism is still weak and directions are 
fairly well understood. Previously to this time the 
tendency to believe in and to respond to what is said 



20 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

is hampered by incomplete understanding of lan- 
guage ; and after nine years, by a growing disposition 
to question things in the light of personal observation. 
Some one has called credulity "the glory of the 
child." It is, with suggestibility, a measure of his 
teachableness. If children continually doubted what 
they are told; if they were wooden to the suggestions 
of home life, of nature, of music, of all the other good 
influences ordinarily brought to bear upon them, it is 
difficult to say what would be their loss. 

The "Gateways" to the Mind 

The normal child brings with him into the world 
besides his heritage of instincts an equipment of 
nerves and muscles that will enable him to acquire 
a knowledge of his surroundings. It is interesting 
to remember that the body not only clothes the soul, 
but, as the seat of the senses, establishes communica- 
tion between it and the beautiful outer world. 

The instinct of investigation is the impulse that 
prompts the senses to activity, and opens the door to 
the child's intellectual life by filling his mind with 
impressions of everything tangible. The four-year- 
old goes to kindergarten with his head full of ideas 
and fragments of ideas about the things that are a 
part of his environment. "We are told that a child 
learns more in the first six years than in his entire 
university career. He absorbs impressions almost as 
a sponge takes up water — a fact sometimes ignored. 
Just as his first muscular movements are the result 
of instinct, so his earliest perceptions of light, of 
color, sound and texture are the result of acts un- 



CHILD NATURE 21 

conscious and involuntary; and as exercise and train- 
ing are essential to the accurate and controlled move- 
ment of hand and foot and body, so coordination and 
development are necessary to the perfection of the 
senses. By a sort of natural education the child learns 
to hear, to see, to touch, just as he will later learn to 
walk and to talk. 

The Moral Aspect of the Senses 

But the study of the child's sensations from the 
physical side is only incidentally important to the 
teacher, except for its bearing upon his mental and 
moral progress. Defective vision and poor hearing, if 
undetected, may bring upon the child the charge of 
dullness and inattention, and remonstrances from 
parent and teacher but serve to awaken his sense of 
injustice and to breed discontent and sullenness or 
indifference. The sense of taste, which ought merely 
to give zest to the appetite and make the task of 
furnishing the body with fuel pleasant and health- 
ful, may be so perverted that eating becomes an end 
in itself, with gluttony and intemperance conducing 
finally to ill-health and moral laxness. This problem 
belongs primarily to the mother, since these habits 
are commonly the product of poor home training ; but 
it may become the teacher's also, for all the fibres of 
man's nature are so tightly interwoven that over-in- 
dulgence anywhere weakens the whole fabric. Taste 
as a force in the development to the esthetic nature 
imposes a task upon the school; for while it is true 
that so much of the best in art, in literature and in 
music is within the reach of the masses, it is equally 



22 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

true that the mediocre and the tawdry are even more 
accessible, and will often be preferred to what is good 
unless power to discriminate between the two is 
formed outside the home. 

Touch Proper, Sight, and Hearing 

The senses most nearly related to the intellectual 
life are touch proper, whose function it is to make us 
acquainted with the tactual properties of matter, as 
form, hardness, smoothness, sight, and hearing. Even 
adults feel the need of handling things in order to 
know them intimately : at exhibitions of various sorts 
the usual sign "Do not touch" is sufficient evidence 
of this fact. But children feel it more, and the pro- 
hibition so constantly on the lips of their elders must 
be positively painful to the wide-awake boy and girl, 
whose fingers fairly ache to verify the reports of their 
eyes. The powers of observation of normal children 
of kindergarten and primary age are very keen at 
times; little escapes their eyes, and the old saying, 
"Little pitchers have big ears," is a tribute to their 
hearing, as well as to their interest in everything that 
presents the slightest familiar feature. If they some- 
times err in judgment because of their eagerness to 
welcome the known, would it not be fair to attribute 
a part of their mistakes, at least, to the fact that they 
have not been trained to see and to hear accurately? 
That too many lessons have been about things instead 
of dealing with the objects themselves? 

The Concrete versus the Symbolic 

It is true of this period that the concrete makes a 
strong appeal to the child, and teachers of both kin- 



CHILD NATURE 23 

dergarten and primary grades need to make extensive 
use of objects and illustrative material of every kind 
to render things intelligible to him. The child must 
gain through the senses a full comprehension of the 
physical meaning of words before he can transfer that 
meaning to internal qualities. In other words, ab- 
stract ideas demand a concrete background. We 
speak of the symbolic age in children, but experience 
with a few of them satisfies the most hopeful teacher 
that symbolism means one thing to the child, and 
quite another thing to the adult; the latter requires 
an inner connection between symbol and fact; the 
former makes one thing stand for another thing. He 
overturns a chair and calls it a boat or a railway- 
coach as fancy may dictate. Attempt to teach him 
the story of Noah and the Ark, with any idea of im- 
parting to him — or rather, of having him grasp — its 
symbolic significance as understood by the Church, 
and flat failure stares you in the face. A fact pre- 
sented in symbolic form before the child is intellect- 
ually ready to receive it is far more likely to suggest 
ideas that are literal and materialistic (as in the case 
of the small boy who declined to be Jesus' little lamb 
— f because I would have to eat grass,") than to be a 
source of inspiration. 



CHAPTER III 

CHILD NATURE: DEVELOPMENT OF 
THE INTELLECT 

Memory 

BOTH memory and imagination deal in mental 
images; the difference between them lies in the 
fact that in memory the mental picture is accom- 
panied by a consciousness of past experience of the 
thought or event; in imagination, memory-ideas var- 
iously modified, or modified and combined with new 
elements, form new pictures. 

Memory is possible because every thought, act and 
feeling leaves its mark upon the brain-cells in the 
path of its discharge; the retention of the memory- 
images depends upon the permanence of these paths 
in the brain tissue, and to this extent memory is con- 
trolled by physiological conditions. 

Undoubtedly the infant's earliest memories are 
those connected with his feelings of satisfaction or 
discomfort attendant upon eating, and with the bodily 
sensations due to contact with his clothing, his com- 
fortable bed, his agreeable bath. From the obser- 
vations of Preyer, Perez, and others, it may safely 
be concluded that the first memory-image is one of 
taste, followed, in order, by images of smell, touch, 
sight, and hearing. 



CHILD NATURE 25 

Types of Memory 

Experience has taught us that sensation does not 
cease at the moment its stimulus ceases to act. Often 
words that are not apprehended by us when uttered 
resolve themselves into coherence after the voice has 
stopped. The same thing is true of the other senses ; 
you can still see the facial expression of the friend 
who has just left you; the "feel" of the skin of a 
peach just peeled still causes certain of your muscles 
to contract unpleasantly. These after-sensations, or 
after-images, continuing after the sense-stimulus has 
been withdrawn, are the beginnings of the true men- 
tal images which, when revived in consciousness, are 
called memory-ideas. 

The older psychology taught that the mind had 
different faculties, of which memory was one; the 
modern doctrine is that memory is a function of all 
the cerebral centers ; and so to-day it is customary to 
speak of motor, of visual, or of auditory memories, 
according as the images revived or remembered are 
images of movement, of sight, or of sound. The pre- 
vailing types of memories vary with persons ; but usu- 
ally when memory is reproductive (brings back into 
consciousness objects or events that have been known) 
instead of being merely verbal, the visual image pre- 
dominates; accompanied, perhaps, by less distinct 
auditory, motor, or tactual images. In children from 
one to five years of age, a period in which memory 
is largely reproductive, visual, auditory, . and motor 
images are, as a rule, most prominent. 

The memory -tone, or ascendant type of memory, 
is an indication of the stage of development attained. 



26 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

The infant's consciousness is dominated by sense- 
ideas of taste, smell, and touch; when he begins to 
crawl about, when the senses of sight and hearing 
become more active and acute, we shall expect im- 
pressions that come to him through these channels, 
and their images, to remain with him with more or 
less accuracy and distinctness, as may be determined 
by attendant conditions. 

When True Memory Begins 

Yery few persons really remember events or feel- 
ings experienced before the third or fourth year; 
usually what we think we remember of that time is 
what we have been told — our images have taken form 
from the verbal descriptions of those about us. And 
this is only natural, for memory-images that lack as- 
sociations to link them definitely with other exper- 
iences, and that lack the distinctness that results from 
their formulation in words, must become confused or 
be entirely lost from their close succession and over- 
lapping in consciousness. Sully says, "The third year 
is epoch-making in the history of memory. It is now 
that impressions begin to work themselves into the 
young consciousness so deeply and firmly that they 
become a part of the permanent stock-in-trade of the 
mind. The earliest recollections of most of us do not 
reach back beyond this date, if indeed so far." 

Rententiveness 

Native retentiveness or tenacity of memory is 
greater in the early part of life, owing to the greater 
plasticity of childhood. The tenacious memory of the 



CHILD NATURE 27 

kindergarten child holds fast his clear impressions, 
for which the general activity of the senses at this 
period is responsible. In the years from five to nine, 
when girls' activities approach most nearly those of 
boys, their motor memories show the most marked 
increase, bnt diminish with the change to more quiet 
habits in the years following. In boys the advance is 
continuous between the years of five and fifteen, with 
the more pronounced increase occurring in the later 
years of the period. All children gain in verbal mem- 
ory as their power to understand and to use words 
improves ; it is probably at its best by the age of thir- 
teen or fourteen. 

Recall 

"Working with children of kindergarten age we 
find their power of voluntary recall is limited. At 
three or three-and-a-half years the child will make 
an effort to remember, but is not always able to do so. 
Even unusually bright children are often unable to 
tell back the story immediately after having heard it. 
Some time is required for its assimilation; perhaps 
after three or four days the child will spontaneously 
give a very complete account of facts that he could 
not recall earlier on demand. This is one reason for 
the practice of many kindergarten and first grade 
teachers in the Sunday school, who wait until the fol- 
lowing week before asking for the child's expression 
of the lesson-story, either verbally or by means of any 
sort of handwork. 



28 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

Ideas of Time and Space 

The inability of the child to localize his images 
in time and in space adds to their indefiniteness. 
Words that express duration of time, and words that 
measure distances, have no meaning "until contact with 
nature has given them content. "They (children) 
talk about the days as if they were things." To-day, 
yesterday, and to-morrow are understood dimly, for 
now is the only time that counts in their world of 
present interests. "A girl of four asked, 'Where is 
yesterday gone to?' and 'Where will to-morrow come 
from V " And another child, after the questior 
"Mother, how old is Jesus?" had been answered, in- 
quired, "How old was grandma when Jesus was 
born?" Countless comparisons and adjustments 
must unconsciously be made by the child before he 
can begin to appreciate the meaning of the most com- 
mon time words. A period of years means nothing, be- 
cause there is nothing in the four-year old's life by 
which to estimate such a span ; the few weeks or days 
preceding a much-desired event are ages long. Gradu- 
ally these mysteries are solved. Going to the kinder- 
garten day by day helps to measure off the weeks, 
and the years that he has spent in school are an aid 
to the primary child in understanding longer periods 
of time. 

Ideas of locality are somewhat less perplexing to 
the little learner. Memory tells him where to find 
the toys he has put away, and helps him recognize 
the places he has visited; but ideas of distance, like 
ideas of time, may be very vague even to children in 



CHILD NATURE 29 

the primary grades. There is a tendency to localize 
distant objects near by; on the other hand, a few- 
blocks will seem a long way to short legs that have 
not often walked so far. The words In a country 
far away will probably be interpreted as the place 
farthest from home that the child has visited; per- 
haps country will be the one word in the phrase with 
meaning for him, and so visions of the farm on which 
he spent a few days of the previous summer will fur- 
nish him with a scene for the talk or story that fol- 
lows. 

Imagination 

In the child's early imaging the boundary line be- 
tween memory and imagination is not clearly drawn. 
Imagination, properly so called, however, is distin- 
guished from memory by its constructive quality. 
The infant's expressions of desire are a sign of imag- 
inative vigor, which is also seen in the original de- 
vices of older children to bring about their own pur- 
poses. They show it too in their imitative play when 
they depart from their models by adapting them to 
meet original ideas, and in the invention of games 
and of incidents in their free and uncontrolled play. 

Sometimes the child of three or four is so much 
in the thrall of imagination that he fails to make the 
proper distinction between the real and the fancied; 
he lives in a state of half-dreams whose fabric is 
woven of bits of memory, of present actual facts, and 
of the unrealities of play. After these earliest fancies 
are outgrown, the world of make-believe is still a 



30 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

charming place, and 'let's pretend" is frequently 
heard on the lips of the primary child. Forbush 
calls the child at this stage "The Young Pretender," 
and Mrs. Meynell says that children delight to put 
aside their good sense while they "pretend." "That 
is their own word. Every child uses it, and every 
child knows what he means by it. 'Let's pretend/ 
not 'Let's believe.' Their mother does not put 'Let's 
pretend' into the child's mouth — she finds it there. 
Without it there is no play. But the pretending is 
always drama and never deception or self-deception." 
The following incident bears out this statement. Two 
small girls, one four, the other five years old, had 
been looking at the pictures in a book on natural his- 
tory. Suddenly both of them uttered little shrieks of 
mingled alarm and pleased excitement as they scram- 
bled under a couch. When questioned they said they 
were "playing the alligator in the book is alive and 
trying to catch us." They were not actually afraid, 
but there was all the excitement arising from the 
simulated feeling, and the game gave opportunity for 
the exercise of the dramatic instinct so strong in these 
years. 

No doubt a few children are so matter-of-fact that 
it is necessary to make an effort to develop imagina- 
tion in them. But with most of them it is sufficiently 
strong to vivify even the dullest things ; to make out 
of the merely pleasant idea a picture glowing with 
color ; or, on the other hand, to people the dark stair- 
way or the unlighted room with monsters suggested 
by the bears and giants and witches of the tales they 
hear. 



CHILD NATURE 31 

Animism 

The tendency to invest inanimate objects with life 
and feeling and to explain the phenomena of nature 
by attributing personality to them, is common to 
children and to all primitive peoples, and is another 
evidence of imaginative activity. Its educational 
value lies in the fact that it helps bring the child 
into a sympathetic state of mind with what would 
otherwise be outside his power to comprehend. Four- 
year-old Dorothy ascribed her own probable feelings 
to her old favorite, Doris, when, having deprived the 
latter of her clothes and put her to bed that she might 
give all her attention to a new doll, she attempted to 
justify her conduct by explaining that Doris was sick, 
and did not care to wear the pretty dress and coat. 

The animistic tendency is strongly marked in the 
kindergarten child, but by the close of the primary 
period, the causes of thunder and rain are better un- 
derstood, and practical experience has taught the 
truth about dolls. 

Imagination the Builder of Ideals 

Imagination is one of the teacher's strongest allies ; 
it hastens the assimilation of new ideas, develops the 
sympathetic nature, and enters very largely into the 
building-up of ideals. 

Childish imagination helps dictate the answer to 
such questions as Whom do our children admire? 
What qualities of mind and heart appeal to them? 
What occupations do they wish to follow when they 
reach the "grown-up" land? 

So far as occupations are concerned, children gen- 



32 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

erally choose one with which they are familiar. The 
boy between seven and nine is attracted to the trades, 
and to the life of the farmer, the soldier, or the sailor. 
The girl of eight or nine wants to be a teacher, a 
dressmaker, or a housekeeper. The preferences of 
both girls and boys are often based on liking for the 
work named, but sometimes they are influenced by 
the fact that certain occupations are more lucrative 
than others. The child of four or five wants to be a 
policeman, a fireman, to drive the grocer's wagon, or 
to be a motorman on the street-car. One small boy 
was overheard saying he would be a civil engineer dur- 
ing the week, but a motorman on Sundays and holi- 
days ! 

Persons Admired 

Answers to the question, ff What person of whom 
you have ever heard or read would you most like to 
resemble?" naturally fall into three classes: parents 
and acquaintances, those nearest to the child in his 
first years; historical personages from past and pres- 
ent times; and characters from literature. One in- 
vestigation showed that almost half the children at 
seven years of age found their ideals in father and 
mother, in neighbor and friend; about two-fifths, in 
literary characters; in the eighth and ninth years 
there was a falling-off under the headings of father 
and mother. And these studies generally have served 
to bring out the fact that children at six and seven 
years of age most frequently name their parents as 
their ideals. The percentage of those naming God 
and Christ is very small, of those naming Bible char- 
acters even smaller. As teachers in Sunday-schools 



CHILD NATURE 33 

we may well seek the reason for this. Have we done 
all we could to make the Old Testament characters 
real to them, and to set before them the Master's beau- 
tiful life in such a way that the humanity of Jesus 
could make its demand upon their better natures? 
Or have we put too great a barrier between them and 
Him by dwelling exclusively upon His divinity? Or 
do the majority of school children know nothing at 
all about the Heavenly Father and the Son, and the 
Bible personages that ought to be so full of interest 
for them? 

Qualities Admired 

Ask a child in the kindergarten what he can do 
to please Mother and his answer is, usually, "be good," 
which means being obedient to her wishes. The reply 
is the same if you ask what God wishes His little 
children to do, except that they may add the words 
"be kind." Their ideals must possess the virtues sug- 
gested by these replies ; in many cases they are further 
endowed with marvellous powers and with all the good 
things of this world. Only as the materialism of early 
childhood is outgrown does the imagination picture 
the desirability of the higher and more abstract qual- 
ities, such as courage, freedom, wisdom, and truth; 
and not until the age of fifteen or sixteen do most 
boys and girls dream of charging on to victory in the 
larger world of achievement from motives of patriot- 
ism and service. 

How the Child Thinks 

Though thinking involves the same elements in 
both cases, the adult carries on his train of thoughts 



34 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

in words supplemented, it may be, by visual or other 
images; the young child thinks first in images, and 
later in words, as his vocabulary is acquired. His 
difficulty in trying to fashion in language the stuff 
of which his thoughts are made is charmingly ex- 
pressed in the lines : 

"People say to me, 

'A penny for your thought!' 
And I can't remember thinking; 

And I should think I ought. 
I wasn't sleeping, either; 

I know that, because 
I saw things out of my two eyes : 

I wonder where I was. 

"Xow I'm back, I see them 

Sitting all around; 
And the noise together 

Makes a purring sound. 
But I know something more 

Than just awhile ago; 
I know something more! — 

I wonder what I know." 

Usually by the end of the third year or at the 
beginning of the fourth, there is a decided quickening 
of the intellectual life of the child. A wealth of im- 
pressions is coming to him from all sides so rapidly 
there is hardly time to assimilate even the facts entire- 
ly within his comprehension. Unconsciously he com- 
pares old and new ideas, and tries to find the con- 
nections between them. Curiosity is alive, touching 
everything from the cat and her kittens to the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies. Imagination and mem- 
ory are there, the latter to interpret, the former to 
help with its suggestion that this is a reasonable world 



CHILD NATURE 35 

capable of being "understood. The first questions, 
"What is this?" "What is that?" are usually a reach- 
ing out for the names of things; for the child in- 
stinctively feels that everything has a name for iden- 
tification and classification. Professor Sully speaks 
of a boy of three years and nine months who hurled 
such questions as these at his mother: "What does 
frogs eat, and mice and birds and butterflies?" and 
"What does they do?" and "What is their names?" 
"What is all their houses' names ?" "What does they 
call their streets and places ?" He once explained that 
he thought birds and butterflies and frogs and mice 
all had names given them by their mothers, as his 
mother had given him his. 

The Causal Idea 

Very soon interest strikes deeper in quest of 
origins and sources. All about him the child sees 
things in process of construction, from the dough 
that is being kneaded into loaves by his mother's 
deft hands to the house being built across the street. 
But there are other operations he has not seen, so he 
demands of those about him, "Who makes the birds? 
the trees? the hills? Who makes the trees grow?" 

And then his "Why?" — his insatiable thirst for 
the causes and uses of things — which is also an ex- 
ample of his practical outlook upon life. Whatever 
is must not only be the product of a personal agency, 
but must answer to some need ; and the usefulness of 
things is of such importance that objects are fre- 



36 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

quently described in terms of their utility — the tree 
is "To sit under/ 5 or "To make the wind blow." 

It is safe to assume that all children ask "Why?" 
before the age of three, and show interest in the 
causal notion before four years old. The causation 
of natural phenomena comes in for a large share of 
attention; the attribute of motion in objects appeals 
very largely, perhaps more generally to boys than to 
girls; the latter are likely to be much interested in 
everything about the house. Probably all children 
are interested in the origin of life and in the causal 
idea pertaining to religious subjects before the age of 
seven. 

Our Response 

The shadow on the wall, the wind, the rain, the 
sun, animals, other children, the new baby and 
whence he came, his own body and origin, and the 
supernatural world — all are subjects for the four- 
year-old to puzzle over and to dispose of as best he 
can. Many of his questions are idle, and these should 
be ignored ; but these early years are years of promise 
when indifference and impatience are fatal to the 
instinct of investigation, and when a serious question 
should meet with a sympathetic response from par- 
ents and teachers. Ability to reason presupposes 
trained powers of observation and insight. Ordin- 
arily the little child's deductions are based upon in- 
complete and indefinite conceptions, and his feelings 
of the relationships of things are obtained by con- 
trasting non-essential features with those that are 
intrinsic. The sky was a gorgeous mass of color — 
"orange and scarlet and purple" — when the little 



CHILD NATURE 37 

child said, "The sun is melting." It looked as if 
it were ! And so we must not condemn the childish 
reasoning as the result of wrong methods, but recog- 
nize that his immaturity, his inexperience, and his 
lack of training are responsible for his mistakes. 

Unfortunately the first twelve or thirteen years 
are too often looked upon as years of acquisition ex- 
clusively, years whose chief business is the storing-up 
of useful information ; the fact that efficiency depends 
upon ability to make right choices is ignored. Eeason 
does not spring into being fully developed, as did 
Minerva. The child should be required to solve such 
problems as are suited to his capacity and will help 
him meet the challenge of his daily needs. The prac- 
tice of the kindergarten teacher who says, "Now, 
John, look at both chairs carefully, before you sit 
down, to see which one is the right size for you," is 
sound and of far more permanent value than that 
which directs him to a particular chair. When he 
decides the matter for himself, if his judgment is 
correct, he grows in self-reliance; if it is wrong, he 
can be helped to see his error. The habit of parents 
and of teachers by which all the child's thinking is 
done for him dwarfs his mentality and his reasoning 
power. 



CHAPTER IV 

CHILD NATURE: DEVELOPMENT OF 
THE EMOTIONS 

THE higher emotional life of man is largely col- 
ored by his intellectual and ethical ideals, but 
the emotional life of the young child knows no such 
restraints, and expresses itself in feelings far more 
primitive, more closely interwoven with the instinc- 
tive reactions. According to James, both emotions 
and instincts are impulses from within, the latter to 
act, the former to feel, "characteristically, when in 
presence of a certain object in the environment." The 
reason for the close parallel of these two sorts of ten- 
dencies is perhaps to be found in their usefulness in 
maintaining life; both were necessary to primitive 
man in his struggle for existence and both are indis- 
pensable to-day. The impulse to do, to plunge ahead 
without forethought of consequences, must often have 
brought disaster in its train had not protective fear 
held impulse in check; and the social side of man's 
nature might have remained forever undeveloped had 
it not been endowed with the instinct of love. 

The Child's Fears 

Pain and pleasure, induced entirely by bodily con- 
ditions, are the earliest feelings experienced by the 



CHILD NATURE 39 

infant, who turns, as naturally as the blossoms to 
the sun, to the source of his pleasant, comfortable 
sensations, and as noticeably avoids whatever might 
make for discomfort as soon as he is able to recognize 
its causes. Fear is a feeling aroused by the thought 
that pain or disagreeable things are impending. Its 
manifestations in children are familiar. The dark, a 
black dress or hat, a new object or a strange person 
or sound, and different surroundings may awaken this 
feeling; sometimes an object moving along without 
an apparent cause will send a small child into a panic ; 
and fur and feathers are frequently terrifying to the 
little person. In an apartment house a hall-boy was 
recently overheard threatening three-year-old Ger- 
trude with the remark, "If you throw those papers 
in the hall I'll get the feather-duster." This child's 
fear of feathers was such that the threat to bring 
them near her was sufficient to deter her from dis- 
obedience. 

Their Sources 

Some childish fears, we are told, are inherited; 
some are due to imagination and superstition; some 
are the result of disquieting experience. One of the 
interesting writers of the day has shown in a recent 
article that many of the otherwise incomprehensible 
fears of adults have their root in almost forgotten 
occurrences dating back to childhood. It is probably 
true that some of our earliest fears have an instinc- 
tive basis ; but many others are undoubtedly prompted 
by the feeling of helplessness or of ignorance that 
assails one in the presence of superior forces, either 
of nature or of man. Compayre calls timidity that 



40 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

"diffuse fear, which paralyzes all the movements of 
the child three or four years old, arid which is, as it 
were, the residuum of the fears of the first period." 
A little timidity is good for children that are trusted 
to go about alone, but very often we find them un- 
afraid in the presence of things that might prove 
dangerous, and fearful where there is no cause. 

It would seem that under three years of age chil- 
dren are most commonly afraid of things seen and 
heard ; that after this, until the fourteenth year, there 
is a fairly constant increase in fears due to imagin- 
ation. Investigations tend to show that fear in chil- 
dren and young persons is practically universal. Ac- 
cording to one, girls are more fearful than boys, 
while another shows a greater variety in the fears of 
boys than in those of girls, with more due to imagin- 
ation. It is possible that there may be children en- 
tirely without fear at the age of six, but, by all ac- 
counts, it is hardly likely. 

Imagination and Fear 

Fears ascribable to imaginative activity are par- 
ticularly interesting to teachers of young children, 
because they are probably most numerous and most 
evident in the years from five to seven or eight. 
Pierre Loti, in The Story of a Child, writes of his 
childish fear of the great sea, and other writers — 
George Sand and Charles Lamb among them — have 
spoken of their horror of the dark. Very often a 
foolish or superstitious story leaves an indelible im- 
pression upon the plastic mind of the sensitive little 



CHILD NATURE 41 

one, and furnishes a background for the terrors of 
night. In one of his essays, Lamb tells of the tor- 
tures he endured as a result of his interest in a pic- 
ture that seemed to fascinate him. It represented 
the Witch raising up Samuel, and occurred in an old 
History of the Bible, which he loved to pore over. 
Eather fortunately for him, one is led to think, he 
one day tore a page of the beloved volume and it was 
thereafter put beyond his reach; but the memory of 
that one picture colored his dreams from the fourth 
to the seventh or eighth year of his life. 

"Signs" 

Most children are superstitious, attaching peculiar 
values and powers to a great variety of objects. Such 
curious beliefs, as that a wish made on seeing the 
first watermelon of the season, or on seeing a load 
of hay, will come true, are prevalent among school 
children; and faith in "lucky stones," so-called, and 
other fetiches is also usual. Even if they do not 
fully believe in the efficacy of such signs, children 
yield to the suggestion of the words "See a pin and 
pick it up, All day long you'll have good luck" — and 
to others of similar import. The collecting instinct 
finds plausible psychological explanation in the theory 
that it is a survival in the child of the savage impulse 
to collect strange and beautiful things, with the hope 
that some good will result therefrom. This, it is said, 
was the belief of our early ancestors, as it is of prim- 
itive tribes to-day. 



42 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

Faults of Little Children 

Sully, in his Studies of Childhood, speaks of the 
"raw material of morality/' a term embracing anger, 
envy, cruelty, sympathy, and other childish manifes- 
tations of feeling. Generally speaking, the meaning 
of the word moral precludes its use with reference to 
the acts of the very young child, since it implies a 
rational choice between selfish instincts and desires, 
and what is right. Anger, envy, cruelty, all have root 
in the egoism that is characteristic of the undeveloped 
child mind. Selfishness shows itself in undisciplined 
rage that howls and kicks, bites and slaps; in envy 
and jealousy, when the child demands the toys and 
caresses being lavished upon another. "The child in 
these first years," says Sully, "though not yet human 
in the sense of having rational insight into his wrong- 
doing, is human in the sense of suffering through 
consciousness of an injured self. This reflective ele- 
ment is not yet moral ; the sense of injury may turn 
by-and-by into lasting hatred. Yet it holds within 
itself possibilities of something higher." 

Selfishness also appears strong in childish ideas of 
ownership. Like the savage, who appropriates to his 
use whatever he can lay his hands upon — as his 
needs may dictate — only to throw it aside when it has 
served his purpose, the child feels free to help himself 
to whatever pleases his fancy. A true appreciation 
of property rights is not attained by man until he 
makes things, or works to earn them, and the child 
will not have a proper respect for the rights of others 
in this matter until he too has learned something of 



CHILD NATURE 43 

the responsibility of ownership. He needs to take 
care of his own toys, and to suffer the penalty of 
going without them if he does not handle them prop- 
erly. One writer says that most children under five, 
many children under ten, and some between the ages 
of ten and fifteen years will lie and cheat to get, or to 
retain possession of, a coveted object. 

In answer to the charge of cruelty, frequently 
brought against them, it may be noted that many of 
the acts of children under six, which we condemn as 
cruel, are really acts undertaken in the spirit of in- 
vestigation with no desire to inflict pain, and with 
no realization that it is being endured. And in the 
case of the poor cat and dog, those much-tried play- 
fellows, very often the roughest handling is only the 
visible evidence of the child's strong attachment for 
them. 

Lying and Its Causes 

One day a girl (M — ) in the third grade of a 
public school yielded to temptation, and took a pair 
of much-coveted oversleeves from the desk of another 
child in the room. They were recognized by their 
owner, who reported the theft to the teacher. The 
latter was at first unwilling to credit the evidence of 
her senses, but finally decided to question M — with- 
out implying her suspicions in any way. M — in- 
sisted that her mother had bought the material and 
made the oversleeves, but her manner was not wholly 
convincing; and, finally, in a burst of tears, she 
threw her arms about her teacher's knees and begged, 
"Please don't whip me. Please don't whip me." The 
teacher, horrified yet pitying the poor little culprit, 



44 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

spoke to her very earnestly of the consequences of 
her act and of the lie, both barriers by which she had 
separated herself from her school-fellows. From this 
she led the child to think of her relationship to the 
Heavenly Father whom she had so deeply grieved by 
her act, and the suggestion was made that if M — 
felt truly sorry for her fault, and ready to make 
amends, she should ask God to forgive her. In reply, 
the little girl fell on her knees. 

In this case it would seem that fear of punish- 
ment was quite as strong a motive for the lie as was 
the desire to keep the oversleeves. But fear is not 
the only incentive to children's lies. In some cases 
it is an inordinate desire to say something surprising, 
to excite the wonder or admiration of others. Steven- 
son urges "that whatever we are to expect at the 
hands of children, it should not be any peddling 
exactitude about matters of fact. They walk in a 
vain show, and among mists and rainbows; they are 
passionate after dreams and unconcerned about real- 
ities; speech is a difficult art not wholly learned; and 
there is nothing in their own tastes or purposes to 
teach them what we mean by abstract truthfulness." 
Notwithstanding that this may be true, especially of 
children under school age, whose imagination and 
unreliable memory may lead them to deceive them- 
selves, we cannot permit the child to go on apparently 
wilfully trying to deceive others, though discretion 
and tact must rule our efforts to correct him wisely. 

Dr. G. Stanley Hall mentions among other causes 
of lying in young children, (1) the desire to 
keep secret information considered private — a desire 
that is perhaps traceable to the early developed ten- 



• CHILD NATURE 45 

dency in childhood to secretiveness. It is not alarm- 
ing in young children, but may later account for more 
serious-looking falsehoods. (2) The susceptibility of 
children to suggestion. (3) The desire to please, to 
give the answer they think is wanted, sometimes leads 
to prevarication. One thing it will be well for all of 
us to remember in dealing with this fault: we teach 
more lessons in morality by example than by precept, 
and if we wish our children to have a strict regard 
for truth we must be careful that our words and ac- 
tions do not lie. Eichard Whiteing has a chapter on 
Childhood in his book entitled Little People that is 
very well worth reading in this connection. 

Positive Forces: Love and Sympathy 

Among the most charming traits in the young 
child are his love and trustfulness, freely lavished 
upon those who minister to his welfare and happiness. 
A selfish sort of love ? Possibly, but self-preservation 
is the first law of nature, and so the first evidences of 
affection are spent upon those who are our natural 
allies. Love of parents, of teachers, of friends, of 
the Heavenly Father, has its deepest roots in the con- 
sciousness of benefits received; and out of this love, 
broadened by sympathy — that vicariousness which en- 
ables the individual to place himself in the circum- 
stances of others and to enjoy and to suffer what 
they enjoy and suffer — grows the larger love com- 
monly called altruism. It must spend itself for oth- 
ers, and so society is a factor necessary to its growth. 

Even the baby in arms is capable of feeling sym- 
pathy. When the little one has struck with its tiny 



46 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

fist, or thrown its toys upon the floor in anger, Mother 
places her hands before her eyes and pretends to cry. 
The gesture is understood, and usually wins the right 
response. The child of six or seven that has been 
carefully trained is surely no less responsive, though 
his self-absorption and impulsiveness, and sometimes 
his ignorance, make him appear callous and unfeeling. 
If we meet him on his own ground, however, making 
our appeal in terms suited to his understanding, we 
shall find him anything but hard-hearted, though he 
may not always react according to our adult stan- 
dards. One of his most promising traits is his de- 
sire to help, an impulse that may be cultivated at 
home, in the kindergarten and in the school. Un- 
fortunately, children's efforts are not always com- 
mensurate with their good intentions, but we must 
accept the latter in lieu of the former, even if the 
four-year-old does more damage than good; if the 
seed-time is neglected there will be no harvest. 

Other Traits 

The dependence that marked the kindergarten 
child is gradually displaced by self-reliance as he 
learns to do things for himself. The competitive 
spirit is fanned by the individualistic games popular 
in the primary period, and as the child measures his 
strength against that of his comrades, he realizes 
increasingly his personal power. With boys the wish 
to test this power often vents itself in teasing and in 
bullying animals and younger children; with girls, 
in managing — "bossing" — younger brothers and sis- 
ters, and little friends. The patronizing and dictator- 



CHILD NATURE 47 

ial manner of the girl of eight or nine is very amus- 
ing in the girl of five, when she feels responsible for 
a yonnger child. 

Childish Ideas of Justice 

The kindergarten child's sense of justice is a very 
rudimentary thing, and not much more can be said 
for that of his brothers in the primary grades. Every- 
thing is interpreted in the most literal and concrete 
and personal way. This is the age of an eye for an 
eye and a tooth for a tooth. At six years very few 
children look for motives; their verdict, good or bad, 
is based upon the deed itself. But if kindergarten 
and primary children cannot make fine decisions re- 
garding ethical questions of right and wrong, they 
are very quick to detect and to resent anything like 
favoritism and injustice in home and school rule. 
They have, too, a great respect for custom, with an 
utter disregard for law in the abstract. The rules 
of the games they play are enforced, and are no doubt 
instrumental in increasing the child's respect for con- 
stituted authority; but in these early years com- 
mands laid down by parents and teachers are apt to be 
binding for strictly personal reasons, chiefly because 
the children desire to please, or fear to disobey. 

Child Study versus Knowing Our Children 

Has this little survey of child-nature helped in 
any way to illuminate the individual characteristics 
and differences of the children committed to our 
care in the Church school-room? Has it helped us 
to see that that shy little kitten, Adelaide, always 



48 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

smiling and never seeming to pay attention, is learn- 
ing something after all, or is that one of the facts 
that direct observation and acquaintance with the lit- 
tle girl in her home must teach us? A child-study 
based on books no doubt yields much useful and 
valuable general information, but there are deeps in 
the nature of every child that are peculiar to him as 
an individual. Therefore, let us not be content until 
we know the home and day school conditions that 
surround our children, and have seen them at play 
as well as within the walls of the church building. 
Let us disarm the suspicions of the frightened little 
creature, who "don't like the lady," by calling at her 
house; perhaps by sending her a pretty 7 card, or a 
flower in birthday greeting; but at all events let us 
teach her that we love her. Our interest in these 
little people counts for nothing unless it is built upon 
the rock of personal love and sympathy. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CHILD'S RELIGIOUS NATURE AND 
THE CURRICULUM 

BECAUSE our study has for its particular object 
the religious education of children, we need to 
know ( 1 ) whether there is anything in human nature 
generally, and in the child specifically, that indicates 
an innate religious disposition; (2) Has the child 
any native interests that will respond to the sug- 
gestions of Christian ideals of thought and action? 

Universality of Religious Conceptions 

A religious belief of some sort appears to be the 
common heritage of mankind. It is probable that 
every primitive tribe and people has attempted to 
explain all that was mysterious and awe-inspiring in 
nature by ascribing it to the agency of beings en- 
dowed with powers above those of men. Many of the 
world's most ancient and most interesting monuments 
express the religious ideas and customs of peoples 
whose very names would hardly be known otherwise; 
and wherever we may go to-day, whether it be among 
the Indians of North America, the natives of the 
South Sea Islands, or to the African deserts, wher- 
ever man is — we shall find his fetiches, or his shrines 
and churches. 



50 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

Turning to the child, we find our answer in part 
in his animism, which is the revelation of his sense 
of oneness and of sympathy with all nature's visible 
forms. The little girl carrying pebbles about from 
place to place to afford them a change of scene, and 
the one that could not bear to let the leaves die upon 
the ground, have conceptions and feelings akin to 
those of the poor savage and of the myth-loving 
Greek, and not unlike those of our great poets, the 
seers of all times. Like all these, the child sees in 
the commonest things something to marvel at — the 
swift-rushing stream, the snowflakes, the twinkling 
star, excite his wonder and enkindle his interest. To 
his fresh young eyes nothing is dull or of no account. 
The person who can fold a piece of paper into a 
cocked hat or a boat is a wonder-worker to him. Per- 
haps, unconsciously, he reasons from the boat and 
the hat that all the world is personally directed and 
made, perhaps the feeling is entirely instinctive, at 
any rate, his efforts to find the cause or "causer" of 
everything that comes under his notice is in effect an 
impulse that requires for its satisfaction the discovery 
of a creator, and leads to ready acceptance of what we 
tell him about the Heavenly Father. 

The Child's God 

Apparently the child has also a natural belief in 
immortality, and a feeling that "Our birth is but a 
sleep and a forgetting." He cannot imagine a period 
prior to his existence. "Mamma, where was I when 
you were a little girl?" — "Where did the baby come 
from?" — and his very puzzled demeanor when 



RELIGIOUS NATURE AND CURRICULUM 51 

brought face to face with death, seem to bear out 
these statements. 

But his ideas of God and of heaven are crude 
and materialistic. The child under six accepts what 
we tell him of these subjects; indeed, children under 
ten years are seldom critical, but our words are al- 
ways interpreted in the light of narrow childish ex- 
perience. God is a man with superhuman attributes 
and powers. One child wanted to know whether there 
was a "Mrs. God," and someone has told it of him- 
self that, as a child, having difficulty in explaining 
the Holy Trinity to his satisfaction, he finally con- 
strued it to mean a sort of family group in which 
the Holy Ghost was the mother. Heaven, where God 
and Jesus live, is visualized as a beautiful home with 
furnishings similar to those surrounding the child. 
This is shown in the incident related of a small boy, 
who replied to his own question, "How does God 
make lightning?" by saying, "Oh! I know, He just 
pushes a button." Life in heaven is thought of as 
presenting the same problems and conditions as life 
on earth. A little girl about three years old, whose 
grandfather had died, told her mother she dreamed 
"Grandpa came down from heaven to have lunch 
with us, and then went back to Jesus." 

Miss Shinn, Professor Sully, and others believe 
that usually what children of three or four are told 
of theological matters tends to confuse them; at 
least, that this is so in the case of the brighter minds 
that try to systematize and bring their ideas into 
rational connectedness. There are prominent kinder- 



52 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

gartners and child-study specialists who consider 
children under five years of age too young to be sent 
to Sunday-school ; others set the minimum age at four 
years. 

Children's Interest in Stories 

The child has certain feelings of values that must 
be considered in outlining courses of study for the 
Church School. These feelings for common objects 
and things seem to be measured by their phases of 
action, and by their usefulness to the child. Out- 
ward appearance, as color and size, also attract him 
somewhat, and he is interested in certain qualities, 
as of taste; but purely abstract characteristics appeal 
to him but slightly before the tenth year. 

As to his literary interests, it is quite safe to say 
that all children like a story, and that their liking 
for it will be gauged by its conformity to the peculiar 
capacities and ideals of their own stage of develop- 
ment. The four- or five-year-old is pleased with sim- 
ple little stories of other children, with fairy-tales 
and folk-tales, with myths and nature-stories in which 
trees and birds and beasts talk and act like human 
beings. With the majority of children these interests 
are fairly stable throughout the primary period, show- 
ing only such modifications as are to be expected 
from the progressing intelligence of the older child. 
The three- or four-year-old child probably accepts 
the fairy-tale as true; the boy or girl of eight or 
nine likes the story just as much, but he knows it is 
only a "make-believe." The most marked new in- 
terest in the primary period is shown in taste for 
historical narrative. 



RELIGIOUS NATURE AND CURRICULUM 53 
Their Interest in the Bible 

Dr. Dawson's Study of Children's Interest in the 
Bible is extremely suggestive. His charts show that 
at eight years of age the majority of both boys and 
girls prefer the New Testament to the Old. This 
preference may be due to the fact that it is the source 
of all the stories centering about the infancy and 
childhood of Jesus. But even at eight years two- 
fifths of the boys and less than one-third of the girls 
like the Old Testament better than the New, and 
the percentage increases gradually in the following 
four or five years. The five Bible stories receiving 
the highest number of votes from children of all ages 
were from the Old Testament, with the story of 
Jesus' birth in the sixth place. Other New Testa- 
ment stories chosen were the parable of The Prodigal 
Son, The Flight into Egypt, Changing Water into 
Wine, and The Good Samaritan. The Old Testa- 
ment favorites, in order, were: The Selling of Jo- 
seph, David and Goliath, Daniel and the Assyrian 
Kings, Moses and Pharaoh's Daughter, The Story of 
Ruth. Thirteen of the favorite scenes mentioned 
were from the New Testament, though Daniel in the 
Lions' Den received the highest number of votes, 
with the Crucifixion second, and The Birth of Jesus 
third. 

It is probable that the choice of New Testament 
scenes is due to the children's greater familiarity with 
these through their frequent reproduction in pictorial 
art. Of the characters chosen, John the Disciple 
stands first in their affections, followed by Peter in 



54 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

the second place and Jesus in the third. Why Jesus 
is not named first the following quotation from Dr. 
Dawson attempts to explain: 

"I doubt not that Jesus is naturally the most at- 
tractive character in the Bible for children of all 
ages. This study shows that, as a child, He is more 
often chosen by the younger children than is any 
other character. It seems to me probable that this 
preference would continue among older children if 
the latter were allowed spontaneously to grow into an 
appreciation of the adult Jesus. But religious teach- 
ers are usually so anxious to present Jesus to chil- 
dren as a divine person, and children's minds are so 
unable to grasp the mystical implications of this 
dogma, that the human Jesus is taken away from 
them and the divine Jesus is made an intellectual 
abstraction. The result is that the child can love 
neither the one nor the other." 

We may conclude that the Bible stories most in- 
teresting to children of kindergarten and primary 
age are, from the New Testament, those that recount 
the birth and childhood of Jesus ; from the Old Testa- 
ment, the stories of Joseph, David, Daniel, Moses, 
the Calling of Samuel, and others relating to the 
childhood and youth of the characters presented in 
its pages. 

The Aim of Sunday-school Teaching 

In selecting the subject-matter of instruction for 
the Sunday-school, our choice will be determined by 
our aim as teachers. Those who believe that the 
object of Sunday-school teaching is simple morality 



RELIGIOUS NATURE AND CURRICULUM 55 

may hold that sacred literature offers little advantage 
over profane; those whose one idea is to teach the 
Bible will insist upon the memorization of portions 
of Scripture, of the names of the Old and New 
Testament books, and of various other related facts; 
where the motive is to teach Church doctrines and 
history these subjects will be emphasized. But the 
real object of the Sunday-school is far more com- 
prehensive, introducing all these elements in their 
proper place, while looking forward to a universal 
need — that of training the child's affections and will 
equally with his intellect. Not nature study, not the 
indoctrination of these little people, is its goal, but 
to give to every child a religious outlook upon all 
life, and to lead him to react religiously to every 
stimulus of his environment. 

Teaching the Fatherhood of God 

With this ideal, the nucleus of the primary cur- 
riculum will be most fittingly drawn from the Bible, 
and to this may be added material from secular lit- 
erature and history, from studies in nature, and from 
other sources, by adapting and giving to it the proper 
ethical and religious interpretation. The natural set- 
ting for the child is the home; throughout kinder- 
garten and primary years its influence is dominant, 
and father and mother are the highest authorities. 
The home relations, with their privileges and duties, 
typify that more spiritual relation between the 
Heavenly Father and His children. These early 
years are therefore the most opportune time for 
teaching the Fatherhood of God and His care for all 



56 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

creatures, including the animal world. To such pres- 
entations the child's parental instincts and sympathy 
make response. 

Instruction Material for the Kindergarten 

The child in the kindergarten needs a knowledge 
of nature, not in its scientific aspect so much, but as 
the handiwork of God, and as the manifestation of His 
creative activity. Some of the instruction-material 
for this purpose may be derived from the courses of 
study in corresponding grades in the public school, 
but will need to be presented with the stress on its 
deeper, more religious significance. As parents nur- 
ture them, by analogy children may be taught, through 
the medium of Old and Kew Testament stories, God's 
providence for all man's wants. These too will often 
furnish the most fitting background for simple lessons 
in obedience, truthfulness, sympathy, and courage. 
Stories of some modern babies, as in India and in 
China, whose lives are saved by missionaries in ways 
not less wonderful, perhaps, than that by which 
Moses was preserved to his people, also may be em- 
ployed. The beautiful story of Jesus' Birth — includ- 
ing the Visit of the Wise Men and the Flight into 
Egypt — and the Easter story should be presented 
each year in their proper season, omitting, of course, 
all the harrowing details of the Crucifixion. 

Subjects Suitable for the Primary Department 

In the primary grades the acquaintance of many 
more great Bible characters will be made, each one 
stepping out into the child's intense imagination with 



RELIGIOUS NATURE AND CURRICULUM 57 

a real, personal message of God's special care and 
guidance. No doubt there will be repetitions, but the 
familiar story retold from a slightly different point 
of view, to adapt it to the child's changing and de- 
veloping needs, gains in force. The riches of those 
old wonder-tales, like the story of Gideon and his 
three hundred picked men, and of Moses and the 
Burning Bush, for example, worn down to their gem- 
like perfection through endless repetition by one gen- 
eration after another, are not to be exhausted in one 
telling to a child six or seven years of age. Toward 
the close of the primary period, when the child is 
beginning to form stronger attachments outside the 
home circle, the life of Jesus in the more personal 
relations of Friend and Pattern and Helper will be 
suitable material. The lives of the early saints, and 
of the great missionaries of our own times, may 
profitably be introduced here to satisfy the growing 
desire for biography and history. But whatever the 
subject may be, whatever the source of the story, there 
must be a real connection between it and the life of 
the child — some point at which it touches his person- 
ality and vitalizes it. 

The Topical Arrangement of Stories 

Because instruction must be definite and concrete 
in these first years, because the child's ideas of space 
and of time relations are extremely limited, it is 
recommended that lesson systems follow the topical 
plan, by which groups of stories are arranged about 
certain topics, all related to a central theme, the 
underlying thought for the year. Where the instruc- 



58 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

tion-material is properly graded and classified to 
cover the work of the entire school course, these 
central themes will be found to be progressively dif- 
ferent from year to year, thus insuring a unified 
curriculum with appropriate lessons for each grade, 
and no time wasted in useless repetition. In the 
kindergarten particularly, the choice of topics may 
show some connection with seasonal changes, and 
both here and in the primary grades, when possible, 
the more important Church fasts and feasts should 
govern it. In many cases, unless this be done, the 
religious significance of Christmas and Thanksgiving 
will be entirely overshadowed by their celebration in 
the home ; Thanksgiving will mean nothing more than 
a big turkey with the usual embellishments, and 
Christmas joy will be measured by the number of 
gifts received. 

Suggestions from Various Sources 

The arrangement of lessons under topical heads 
places the stress upon one particular subject for a 
number of weeks, and thereby helps to fix the lesson- 
thought. One kindergarten text-book offers for the 
Advent season a series of four stories on Generosity 7 , 
in the following order: The Little Evergreen Tree; 
The Coat of Many Colors; The Baby King; The 
Poor TToman's Pennies. All are permeated by the 
thought that love is shown in giving, and that joy 
and real happiness follow the giver. Another text 
has for the Christmas season (for the second year 
kindergarten) the topic, "Thanksgiving for God's 
Best Gift," with the stories — An Angel's Message, 



RELIGIOUS NATURE AND CURRICULUM 59 

The Story of the Baby Jesus, The Visit of the Wise 
Men; and, in review, Stories about the Baby Jesus 
Eetold. 

Probably the most satisfactory study of topics 
would result from a comparison of outlines of various 
courses of study and lesson systems for the depart- 
ments under consideration. Among these may profit- 
ably be included Cushman's Bible Lessons for Little 
Beginners, Palmer's One Year of Sunday School Les- 
sons for Young Children, detailed outlines of the In- 
ternational Graded Sunday School Lessons, and Pro- 
fessor Pease's Outline of a Bible School Curriculum. 
Professor Pease takes a very decided stand in suggest- 
ing for the kindergarten grades, almost exclusively, 
lessons in nature study based on the Scriptures. In 
both the first and second years allowance is made for 
the Christmas and Easter stories, each to be given 
in its proper season. The outline for the primary 
grades has for its general subject God the Loving 
Father and His children, with the theme, God the 
Loving Father providing for His children's needs, 
for the first year primary; God the Loving Father 
providing wise laws for His children, for the second 
year; and God the Father, providing guidance and 
help for His children, through Jesus, the Friend of 
all, for the third year. The grade subjects are natur- 
ally subdivided into various topics, each covering sev- 
eral lessons. In the third grade one whole topic, The 
Friend teaching about happiness, is a study of the 
Beatitudes, and concludes with their memorization in 
the review lesson. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE QUEST OF A TEXTBOOK 
Types of Textbooks 

A GLANCE at the long shelf of books recently 
produced for use in kindergarten and primary- 
grades of the Sunday-school indicates that the old 
type of Biblical, doctrinal, and missionary catechisms, 
with their dry questions and drier answers — enliv- 
ened, it may be, by a few crude illustrations — has 
been almost entirely displaced by a new type of book 
more in accord with the teachings of Psychology and 
Child Study. We find these new books taking into 
account more and more the child's native interests 
and needs, and attempting to supply them with ma- 
terial suitable for the purpose, and appropriate for 
use in the Church School. For children from three 
to six years old very attractive series of lessons based 
on kindergarten principles are to be found; for the 
child of six, seven, or eight years of age there are 
beautifully illustrated leaflets, or folders, carefully 
graded on the same basis that obtains in our best day- 
schools. The use of the modern book in all the best 
and most progressive schools is sufficient proof of its 
welcome. A niche will always remain for the doc- 
trinal catechism, which ministers to a unique pur- 
pose; but its facts will be taught young children ob- 



THE QUEST OF A TEXT BOOK 61 

jectively as far as possible, while the set questions 
and answers that are the concise statements of these 
facts will be reserved for memoriter work later on. 



Underlying Principle of the Modern Textbook 

A few good books of the catechetical type have 
appeared recently, but, speaking broadly, the best 
modern textbooks are based upon the "Heuristic" or 
source method, which sends students to the original 
sources of information and knowledge, whether these 
be books, the workshop, or the world of nature about 
us, the aim being acquaintance with facts at first 
hand, and personal experiencing of them by the child 
himself wherever and whenever practicable. In some 
cases the textbook offers little more than outlines that 
are to be expanded by the teacher. All source-books, 
whether they be intended for the use of teacher or of 
pupils, demand work from those using them, in rec- 
ognition of the principle that growth and develop- 
ment are conditioned by self -activity and responsive- 
ness. 

Its Application to the Sunday School 
Kindergarten 

It is usual to think of the textbook as the spring 
from which the child is to draw his supply of facts 
of geography, arithmetic, grammar, and — in this case 
— of the Bible and of religion. Even if this idea 
were entirely correct where older children are con- 
cerned, it would not be tenable with reference to the 
child of the kindergarten, and to a limited extent only 
with reference to the primary boy and girl. Chil- 



62 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDKEN 

dren under eight or nine years of age are seldom fit- 
ted to do much independent work in the preparation 
of lessons. For this reason some of the books de- 
signed for these grades are planned for the teacher's 
use exclusively. They generally contain, with the story 
to be told, suggestions as to its effective telling, some 
suitable illustrations, little hymns and prayers, and 
outlines for related handwork. Other systems of les- 
sons not only supply all this material and much more 
for the teacher in a splendid manual, but furnish the 
child with a parallel series of folders to be given out 
singly after each lesson has been taught. Here is 
the morning's story retold, for mother to read aloud, 
the pretty little song or memory verse, the appro- 
priate picture that may be colored at home, with, 
sometimes, space for freehand drawing, or for writ- 
ing or printing the lesson-thought or text. All these 
devices clinch the lesson taught, and are a link be- 
tween school and home if properly utilized. They 
deepen the child's interest, and may arouse that of 
the negligent parent. Even the youngest child likes 
to take home the lesson-leaflet, a mounted picture, or 
a picture-lesson card with its questions on the back. 

Difficulties in the Way of Making a Choice 

The number of textbooks for the kindergarten 
and primary grades of the Church School is con- 
stantly growing. Some are written by teachers whose 
success with their own classes, reinforced by the ad- 
miring pressure of friends, has led them to give their 
ideas to the public; occasionally, in such cases, one 
is forced to the conclusion that it is the personality 



THE QUEST OF A TEXT BOOK 63 

of the teacher, rather than anything she has been 
able to set down in writing, that is responsible for 
her success. Some of the books are built upon a mis- 
taken conception of the requirements; some of them 
are so full of specific directions that they could fit 
only the particular set of circumstances that molded 
them. If the intellectual and social environment of 
our children differs from that of the children for 
whom the book was originally written, we cannot use 
it without modification. 

Suggestion Not Prescription 

The teacher's manual should be suggestive and 
inspirational, not prescriptive. The barest outline in 
the hands of a skilful teacher is productive of better 
results than the most elaborately worked-out lesson- 
plan could be when used by an untrained person 
lacking insight and understanding. For the person 
who has skill the most generally helpful book is the 
one that leaves much to her imagination and discre- 
tion. Such a book presupposes a teacher who loves 
her children and wishes to obey the command, "Feed 
My lambs" ; it presupposes a teacher not only willing 
but eager to avail herself of every opportunity to add 
to her knowledge of pedagogy and child-nature, and 
to improve her methods. So long as all teachers of 
beginners and of primary grades are not fully trained, 
there will, however, be a demand for the manual that 
is not only suggestive but enters intimately into the 
details of the programme,, without exacting iron- 
bound adherence to it. 



64 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

A Few Tests To Be Met 

A wise selection is possible only as our idea of the 
essentials of a good textbook is clear and correct. Ke- 
membering that child-nature does not vary with the 
creed of the parents, the following test questions may 
be applied, no matter what the denomination of those 
who may use them. 

1. What is the intention of this book? 

A careful reading of the Preface and Introduction 
will lead very quickly and surely to an understanding 
of the author's aim, and to the ideals underlying his 
work. A study of a few of the lessons should tell us 
whether that aim is likely to be realized by their use. 

2. Is the subject-matter of the book suited to the 
age and mental attainments of the child that is to 
receive it? Corned beef and cabbage are not fed to 
infants, because they are physically unable to digest 
these foods; similarly, discretion must be used in 
selecting food for their mental and spiritual assimil- 
ation. 

3. Is it based on sound pedagogical principles? 
Is it planned to meet the interests and higher needs 
of the child through recognition of the stage of de- 
velopment already attained by him? In short, is it 
concrete, direct, simple, and does it provide for the 
outlet of the child's activity? Does it state conclu- 
sions for the child, or does it present truth in such a 
manner that he is bound to reach these conclusions 
through his own mental and emotional activity? 

4. Will it fit in with the lessons that have gone 
before, and with those that shall follow as an integral 
part of the unified whole ?. 



THE QUEST OF A TEXT BOOK 65 

5. Is it in accord with the spirit of the Church's 
teaching ? Does it present spiritual truths reverently, 
and will its use encourage the growth of the spirit of 
reverence and Christian faith and worship in the little 
people for whose nurture it is intended? 

6. Does it provide a leaflet or picture card to be 
taken home by the child? If so, are the pictures 
clear, distinct, and artistic, and, above all, suitable? 
The picture illustrating the Sunday-school lesson 
ought to be more inspirational in tone than are those 
appearing in the every day story-book; besides, even 
the small child appreciates real art whenever its sub- 
ject is within his comprehension. 

Handwork and Games 

There is hardly a new book for these lowest grades 
but acknowledges the necessity for activity on the 
part of the child, and attempts to meet it by the in- 
sertion of finger-plays, games, and motion-songs, and 
by requiring certain forms of handwork to be done. 
Because many teachers are limited in resources from 
which to draw such exercises, it is important that 
the book selected shall contain some that may be 
fittingly introduced into the Sunday-school work. 

The Teacher's "Helps" 

Lastly, what is to be said for the manual from 
the standpoint of the teacher's personal needs? Is 
the help it affords really encouraging to the highest 
effort on her part, or does it bring about mechanical 
and routine work? For a good general principle it 



66 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

is safe to say: Shun the book that does all your 
thinking for yon; embrace the one that makes yon 
work. The best textbook from this point of view is 
the one that ronses the most thought, that drives us 
to the study, not only of particular lessons, but to 
the study of our own mental forces and those of our 
children. From application of this sort will come 
insight enabling us to question and to teach. Event- 
ually the textbook ought to become to us simply as 
the river-banks that keep the stream within its proper 
channel. 

No "Perfect" Textbook 

The ideal textbook has not been written — never 
will be written if we mean by ideal one that can be 
used in all schools, and under all circumstances, with- 
out subjecting it to any changes. And this is true 
because the most carefully planned books are neces- 
sarily made to meet the average needs of the average 
class, instead of the individual needs of its members. 
In every school, in nearly every class, there will be 
some condition found that is peculiar to itself, and 
for this reason any book will require modification 
and adaptation at the hands of that kindergarten or 
primary teacher who is alert to seize every incident of 
the class-hour that may be a favorable lever by which 
to press home a worthy lesson. 



CHAPTER VII 

METHODS OF TEACHING 
The Opening Circle 

MOTHEK, is it Sunday now?" asks a four- 
year-old as soon as he awakes. At his 
mother's affirmative the child springs from his bed. 
Half -past nine finds him one of the circle of happy- 
faced children in the Church School Kindergarten. 
Beside him sits his five-year-old sister, always alert 
lest he be guilty of some misdemeanor mighty in her 
eyes. Across from him is tiny Anita of Italian par- 
entage, unable to speak a word of English. She has 
brought with her a six-inch rule and some books 
strapped together: it does no violence to her feelings 
of propriety that one is an advertising pamphlet, the 
other a child's book of rhymes. The other children 
represent homes of various nationalities and varying 
degrees of comfort and culture, but all the little peo- 
ple are alike in at least one respect — they are smiling 
and expectant. As the soft strains of Mendelssohn's 
Spring Song merge into the morning hymn the in- 
fluence of the music is felt, and every child is ready 
to rise at the opening chord, and sing the simple 
words of greeting. 

What is the secret of so much pleasurable an- 
ticipation? In a measure it is due, no doubt, to the 



68 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

excitement of going to Sunday-school dressed in spick 
and span best clothes, heightened by the bright room 
with its pictures and music, and by the presence of 
cheerful teachers. But such merely external consid- 
erations would not be sufficient to keep the child 
happy throughout the session; the real reason is one 
that touches his inner self, and has its origin in those 
activities and in that atmosphere of the schoolroom 
which reflects the highest aim of both school and 
teachers — the desire to bring to each child a sense of 
the Father's love, and an appreciation of the beauty 
of goodness, and to guide him into a life that shall 
be expressive of his feeling of kinship with God. 

Real Function of Sunday-school Teaching 

It is not sufficient to be able to keep a class in 
order, nor to keep it amused, nor to pour into the 
child-mind a mass of facts of Biblical history or lit- 
erature. The real purpose of the Sunday-school is 
the formation of Christian character ; in other words, 
it aims to habituate the child to certain right re- 
actions ; and its domain embraces the moral and spir- 
itual natures of the individual. Moral education 
leads him by a natural process of growth to substi- 
tute higher aims of conduct for the "pressure of 
desire," and lifts the cause of his actions from a 
purely personal and selfish motive to one that con- 
cedes the rights and considers the happiness of others, 
accomplishing this end by the development of his 
sympathies through recognition that others have the 
same feelings of pain and pleasure to which he is 
subject; but the province of religious instruction is 



METHODS OF TEACHING 69 

to take man entirely out of himself, to point his way 
to the feet of the Master, and to establish him in 
habits of praise and of self-denying service. 

Self-Activity the Key-Note of Modern Methods 

In a narrow sense it may be said that every teach- 
er's method is, like his personality, a distinctly pri- 
vate possession, that can no more be shared with others 
than can his eyes, or his sense of humor; in a wider 
meaning — that in which it is used here — it refers to 
the teacher's general plan of organizing her material, 
and of manipulating the child's environment in order 
to bring about the desired sort of mental activity; to 
her order of procedure, and to the means or instru- 
ments of her technique. 

How is the lesson material as embodied in the 
story and in the various school activities to be trans- 
formed into a vital, energizing part of the mental, 
moral, and spiritual fibre of the child's life? Cer- 
tainly not by any pouring-in process that would make 
of the teacher a fountain of wisdom, and of the chil- 
dren passive little pitchers waiting to be filled; for 
education is a process of growth to which responsive- 
ness and self-activity are essential. 

The Houses of Childhood 

Madame Montessori lays great stress upon the im- 
portance of the spontaneous activities of children, 
and, in The Houses of Childhood, insists upon their 
having their liberty limited only by the rights of 
others, and by the customs that prevail among per- 
sons of refinement and good breeding. 



70 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

Much of the material designed by her is intended 
for the formal and thorough training of the senses; 
some of it leads directly to the mastery of reading 
and writing, and to number work; and there is spe- 
cial apparatus for physical training. At first each 
child works alone, seated on a rug or at his little 
table; later he joins the others in certain collective 
exercises. By preparing the environment so that 
the child may be allowed perfect freedom — except to 
engage in what might be useless or harmful — it is 
hoped that he will attain that complete mastery of 
self that shall enable him to control and to subor- 
dinate his actions to the demands of his higher na- 
ture. With such ideals and methods it becomes the 
teacher's duty to watch the child's manifestations 
with scientific curiosity, rather than actively to lead 
him. "Life acts of itself/' and "Needless help is an 
actual hindrance to the development of natural 
forces," are two articles of Dr. Montessori's pedagog- 
ical creed. 

The Froebelian Method 

The kindergarten, based on Froebel's wonderful 
philosophy of child-nature and child-nurture, is an 
established fact in our modern educational system. 
Here, too, the spontaneous activity of the child is 
seized upon and, in the various occupations, dramatic 
games, marching, and other customary employments, 
directed into educative channels; for Froebel be- 
lieved that the child needs guidance as well as op- 
portunity to follow the leading of his innate ideas 
and impulses. All the children in the class will be 
found doing substantially the same thing at the same 



METHODS OF TEACHING 71 

time, and the programme is broken up into compar- 
atively short periods. The social impulse is animated, 
and models of right conduct are held up in the plays 
and games, of which many are but the simple imita- 
tive plays of childhood expressed in verse and set to 
music. By these agencies, and through the story, the 
child becomes familiar with good English, his sym- 
pathies are cultivated and extended, and his imagin- 
ation is stirred to emulate what is good and lovely. 

Kindergarten "Playthings" 

The occupations and gifts have an intellectual 
value for the child, and are factors in moral train- 
ing; for example, take the building gifts, whose cor- 
rect use will not only inspire in him a proper respect 
for his materials, but will intensify his dawning per- 
ception of the principle of continuity, of cause and 
effect, as one form grows out of another through the 
shifting of a cube here or of a brick there. In the 
occupations he learns that his acts have a certain 
finality : because a paper carelessly folded will always 
bear a scar, even if the fault can be partially cor- 
rected, the child gradually learns the need for greater 
care and thoughtfulness. At the same time the love 
of color and of harmony, the sense of beauty, and the 
desire to create — to give form to his original ideas 
— are encouraged and gratified. 

In both the educational systems named the use 
of music as a cultural influence is recognized, and 
nature study, including the care of animal pets and 
outdoor work in gardens, where possible, is insisted 
upon. 



72 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

"Psychologizing" Sunday-school Methods 

Attention has been directed to a few of the more 
striking characteristics of these methods because we 
believe that certain of their fundamental principles 
need to be applied to Sunday-school teaching to in- 
sure success. 

Froebel said, "From object to picture, from pic- 
ture to symbol, from symbols to thoughts, leads the 
ladder of knowledge." In the teaching of morals and 
religion there must be a similar progression from the 
concrete to the abstract. In every possible way the 
truths we wish to teach the child must be brought to 
his consciousness through personal experience of 
things and events in which they are inherent. 

The Instruments of Technique 

To what extent the kindergarten's "tools" may 
be used in the Sunday-school is an open question with 
many teachers. Every one freely admits the useful- 
ness and appropriateness of the song, the circle talk, 
and the story; but not all are willing to introduce 
games, gifts, and occupations. It is obviously true 
of the games, as it is of the songs and stories, that 
only a limited number of those used in the week- 
day kindergarten will exactly meet the requirements 
of the Sunday-school, since the latter confines itself 
more particularly to the teaching and application of 
spiritual truth; but the kindergarten ideal embraces 
the spiritual side of child-nature, and has it in mind 
continually, quite as the Sunday-school ideal takes 
account of its physical and mental aspects; and so, 
whenever we can stress an ethical or religious prin- 



METHODS OF TEACHING 73 

ciple by representing it symbolically in a play or 
game, it is right to do so. This is teaching by one 
kind of analogy, just as the story teaches by another 
kind. A kindergarten occupation, introduced for the 
purpose of establishing or strengthening connections 
between the thought of the lesson and the childish 
consciousness of it, is another legitimate Sunday- 
school activity. 

Objective Methods of Teaching in the Primary Grades 

It has been said more than once that no sharp 
distinctions can be drawn between children of kinder- 
garten and primary ages. At six the child does not 
lay off one set of impulses, interests, and intellectual 
capacities as a garment, to don a new set ready-made 
that will serve him during the primary period, so- 
called. On the contrary, he may be said to modulate 
from the key of impulse to the key of imitation by a 
gradual and steady development ; his interests expand 
by degrees, and his mental powers increase by almost 
imperceptible stages, through the free interaction of 
inner and outer forces. Consequently the teacher 
must harmonize her methods with these facts. The 
child of seven or eight years, like the child of four, 
demands the opportunity to learn through direct per- 
sonal contact with things; and by experiencing the 
feelings we wish him to have he must be moved to 
translate his better impulses into the worthy deeds 
we desire him to perform. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE TEACHER'S GENERAL PREPAREDNESS 
The Importance of Sunday-school Teaching 

THE following quotation from the Handbook of 
the Church (Sunday) Schools of Berkeley, Cal- 
ifornia, is worthy of remark: 

"Service of Admission. New teachers are ad- 
mitted from time to time to full membership in the 
Teachers' Association and on the staff by a special 
brief Service of Admission." 

Such a service naturally emphasizes the impor- 
tance and the significance of teaching in the Sunday- 
school, and is a fitting first step toward its responsibil- 
ities and privileges. It should sober the most thought- 
less one of us, and lead us to inquire into our motives 
to make sure that a real desire to enter the Master's 
service is their mainspring, and it has another aspect 
in that it implies a right spiritual attitude on the 
part of the teacher, arising from a consciousness of 
God and from the sense of the soul's dependence upon 
Him. This consciousness is a subtle and far-reaching 
source of power, but needs to be fed by prayer and 
by contemplation of the higher things of the spirit. 
The beautiful picture of Christ in the Garden of 
Gethsemane carries a special message to every one 
engaged in the work of training the young; no study 



TEACHER'S GENERAL PREPAREDNESS 75 

should be undertaken, no attempt be made to teach a 
lesson, without first uttering a prayer for divine help 
and guidance. 

Qualifications Necessary to Success 

Meditation and prayer alone, however, do not 
necessarily make efficient teachers; a liberal fund of 
general information, to which is added a knowledge 
of child-nature, a thorough understanding of and 
sympathy with the best educational ideals and meth- 
ods, and a willingness to give freely of one's time 
for the preparation of the lessons to be taught, are 
quite as essential. Kate Douglas Wiggin holds the 
standard high when she says that the ideal kinder- 
gartner should have the "Music of Saint Cecelia, the 
art of Eaphael, the dramatic genius of Eachel, the 
administrative ability of Cromwell, the wisdom of 
Solomon, the meekness of Moses, the patience of Job, 
the prudence of Franklin, the inventive power of 
Edison, the talent of improvisation of the early Trou- 
badours"; and the ambitious primary teacher will 
agree that the demands upon her capacities are little 
less exacting. Be not discouraged : here, as elsewhere, 
painstaking effort, labor, and self-denial contribute 
largely to success. 

A Few Essentials of Personality 

We carry with us into the schoolroom a great 
many echoes of our life outside. It is impossible to 
measure out a portion of self saying, "This part of 
me teaches," for it is undeniably true that every part 
of our being, every thought and feeling, every ex- 



76 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

perience, contributes to our usefulness in the work or 
detracts from it. After a very pleasant morning in 
a Sunday-school that ranks high, the writer was sur- 
prised to hear the teacher in charge say apologetically 
that she did not feel satisfied with her conduct of the 
session, assigning as the cause the fact that she was 
not properly rested. How few of us take into con- 
sideration the demands of the Sunday-school hour 
when we make our plans for Saturday evening ! 

Health, temperament, general fitness, maturity, 
our love for children — are all factors that must be 
taken into account. Maturity refers not to the num- 
ber of one's years so much as to the capacity for 
understanding, and to the possession of a proper per- 
spective. Culture, by which is meant refinement of 
morals, tastes, and manners, is decidedly a requisite ; a 
cheerful and happy disposition, a broadly charitable 
outlook upon life, unselfishness in a marked degree, 
are other equally important characteristics. What 
one writer calls the teacher's vicar iousness, his ability 
and his willingness, that is, to put himself in his 
pupil's place, is another. It is really sympathy and 
imagination and the power to efface self, and without 
it we can never hope to bridge the gulf between child- 
hood and maturity, nor to find the most effective ways 
of approaching the inner life of the child. 

Avoiding the Ruts 

We have all been surprised at times to discover 
how different some familiar object or act appears 
when seen from a new point of view. It is human 
nature to get into a rut, to become narrow and self- 



TEACHER'S GENERAL PREPAREDNESS 77 

satisfied, unless we train ourselves to look beyond 
the little limits of our daily lives and interests for 
suggestions and criticism. And so it is a good plan to 
Jiave always at hand an authoritative book, germane 
to one's work, into which we may dip frequently and 
deeply; but better still, if there is a teacher's train- 
ing-class, to go into it with enthusiasm and vim for 
the sake of the opportunities it offers for increased 
knowledge, and for intercourse with persons whose 
ideals and aims are like our own. If there is no 
training-class, small groups of teachers often find it 
worth while to meet at certain intervals for the pur- 
pose of reading and discussing some such book as 
Froebel's Education of Man, or a standard work on 
psychology or pedagogy. Visiting other schools and 
classes is also fruitful of good in more ways than 
one, since it enables us to see what other teachers are 
doing and to compare their methods with our own. 
Sometimes a teacher is totally unconscious of her 
own errors or faulty ways of doing things until she 
sees another making the same mistakes. The neces- 
sary condition to all progress is an open and fair 
mind, free from any tendency to find fault gratuit- 
ously, but equipped to distinguish between good and 
poor practice. It is interesting to know that in the 
Union School of Religion, Union Theological Semin- 
ary, New York City, it is the custom for entire classes 
to visit certain other classes at regular intervals. Evi- 
dently the belief prevails here that not only teachers, 
but the children as well, are benefited by such inter- 
course. 



CHAPTER IX 

PREPARATION OF THE PARTICULAR LESSON 
The Time 

EVEEY one must have noticed how events con- 
spire against the person who recklessly puts off 
for to-morrow what should be done to-day : at the last 
moment something almost invariably comes up to 
upset his plans. And though there are conscientious 
teachers who habitually devote Saturday evening to 
the study of the next day's lesson (some less con- 
scientious leave this duty for Sunday morning) , the 
custom is seldom a wise one. Often when it is too 
late, the discovery is made that a much-needed book 
of reference is lacking; or a neighbor drops in and 
the preparation is at best nothing more than a hur- 
ried reading. Adequate preparation implies a full 
acquaintance with the aim and end of the entire ser- 
ies of lessons. In the well-thought-out course of 
study there is a reason for the order in which the 
various topics occur, and for the sequence of the in- 
dividual lessons, and each has some bearing upon 
those that precede and follow it. It is well, there- 
fore, to read over the new lesson at least a week or 
two in advance, to let its truths sink deep into con- 
sciousness, and to give the needed time for collateral 
reading and the working-up of anything obscure or 



PREPARATION 79 

unusual. The number of good ideas that come un- 
bidden when we set to work long enough ahead of 
time, is surprising: the subconscious mind seems to 
do the work for us better than we can do it con- 
sciously when in a hurry. 

The Programme as a Whole 

The new story or instruction-material is to be 
considered with reference to the entire programme. 
No moment of the Sunday-school period is without 
its influence for good, and for this reason every step 
in the schedule requires forethought. The hour should 
be bright and happy, since "joy is the favorable clim- 
ate of childhood"; there should be opportunity for a 
little contemplation of nature, because it is in His 
manifestations in the natural world that the little 
one first sees the hand of God, and from this aspect 
the astronomical year is as important as the Chris- 
tian year. Let the child's eyes open to the beauty of 
the "works of the Lord/' that with them he may 
"magnify and praise Him forever." As it is difficult 
to hold the attention of the young child for long, the 
kindergarten teacher must discover or invent rhyth- 
mic exercises, appropriate games, finger-plays, to sat- 
isfy the need for diversity and relaxation. In the 
primary department such exercises are less necessary, 
though there may be times when a motion-song or a 
march will be just what is needed to stimulate the 
desired spirit of enthusiasm, or to clear the mental 
atmosphere. The element of worship also must be 
provided for, and to this end suitable prayers and 
hymns must be found. The song that fitted last Sun- 



80 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

day's lesson perfectly may not do at all for the one 
following; especially if there has been a change from 
one theme to another. For the sake of unity and 
harmony all parts of the programme must articulate 
perfectly — circle talk, song, game, story, Bible verse, 
and prayer — not one of which is to be given undue 
prominence, or to be used for its own sake, but only 
because it is another avenue by which the day's teach- 
ing may be brought home to the mind of the child. 
Quite as essential as this quality of definiteness — and 
existing without any sacrifice of the latter — is the 
characteristic of elasticity, which makes possible the 
utilization of unexpected occurrences, and of the 
chance remarks of the children to heighten the ef- 
fectiveness of the teaching. In this, as in other 
things, the teacher's measure of success is in propor- 
tion to her general alertness and preparedness. 

Steps in Teaching 

When working up a lesson it is wise to keep in 
mind the several well-defined steps by which the 
child is led from what he already knows to that which 
is new, and back again to the old, by which the two 
elements are compared, and the application is fixed. 
These steps are usually considered under the follow- 
ing names and in the order given : Preparation, Pres- 
entation, Association or Correlation, Generalization, 
and Application. The purpose of the first step is to 
make ready the mind for the reception of the new 
material that will be given in step two, and it must 
bring before the consciousness that old knowledge or 
experience which will serve as a bridge to the new. 



PREPARATION 81 

A pertinent question is not infrequently sufficient to 
stir dormant memories and to point the way of the 
child's mental activity; on the other hand, it may 
require many questions, the definition of new and 
difficult words, or the description of a peculiar custom 
or tradition. Many dull hours in Sunday-school and 
in the day-school must be charged up to the omission 
of this very important part of the teacher's work. 

The term Presentation explains itself; Associa- 
tion and Correlation fix the new in the memory by 
combining it with as many old facts as possible, and 
in as many ways; Generalization follows, reviewing 
all the related facts, and ending with a statement of 
the general truth underlying them. Application is 
essential whether the lesson be one in science or 
morality, and in the teaching of religion will often 
be felt rather than expressed in words, for here we 
are dealing with souls, which are less tangible than 
the unknown quantities, x, y, and z. 

How To Present the Lesson 

There are various ways of communicating knowl- 
edge in the schoolroom, the choice depending upon 
the age and the stage of mental development of the 
persons to be taught. The adult attends a lecture, 
makes notes on what he hears, and supplements the 
latter by extensive collateral reading; in the subjects 
of literature and history (which are the basis of 
Sunday-school teaching in the first years), the high- 
school student is assigned a lesson in a specified text- 
book, and is expected to come to his class prepared 
to recite what he has learned. But neither of these 



82 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

methods is possible with the young child, who reads 
perhaps with difficulty and is just learning to study 
things out for himself. With children of this age 
the body of the new lesson may be "developed" 
through skilful questioning that will send their 
thoughts inward, testing memory, and outward to 
nature and to their books, and to every other source 
for the proper answers. Teaching in this way re- 
quires a high degree of skill on the part of the teacher, 
and on the part of the taught a fairly extensive fund 
of related information or facts. 

The Story 

Under six years this intellectual equipment is al- 
most entirely lacking ; the little kindergartner lives so 
wholly in the world of feeling that his emotions afford 
the best leverage for reaching his inner life; the 
primary boy and girl are in a transitional state that 
leans very heavily toward the emotional. For this 
reason, in the kindergarten always, and in the pri- 
mary grades for the most part, the story is preemin- 
ently the medium for Sunday-school teaching. Oc- 
casionally the primary teacher may develop parts of 
the story, but this ordinarily spoils it as a story and 
robs it of some of its effect. "Cleanliness is next to 
godliness/' "Honesty is the best policy," and other 
similar maxims, fall upon the deaf ears of the four- 
year-old and of the eight-year-old. If you would 
teach them to be clean and neat, rather tell them 
the story Finding a Brother — that story of a little 
boy who was happier dirty than clean until he found 
that the pig alone of all the animals would have him 



PREPARATION 83 

for brother, unless he was willing to wash his hands 
and face. Such a story will do more good than any 
number of abstract maxims. To tell your boy he 
should be ashamed of himself for fearing the dark 
will not make him one whit braver, but repeat to 
him the story of the child Samuel, for instance, and 
the seed of a greater courage will have been planted. 
The child unconsciously puts himself in the hero's 
place, and for having felt bigger and stronger under 
the stimulus of your words he will be better able to 
cope with his fears when next they assail him. 

The preparation of the lesson for kindergarten and 
primary grades, then, generally includes working up 
a story. While the fundamental principles of story- 
telling do not vary, our treatment of material and 
our choice of themes must be adapted to the age and 
understanding of the children that are to hear the 
stories. It is worth remembering, too, that the child 
under seven or eight years of age enjoys the repeti- 
tion of an old story many times over. Two or three 
years later he demands greater variety in his literary 
diet. 

The Teacher's Perspective 

Let us consider the story of Daniel in the lion's 
den. The sixth chapter of the Book of Daniel, verses 
one to twenty-six, is the source. We read these verses 
through once to get the story, and then to get the 
proper perspective, and to refresh our memory of 
what has gone before we begin at the first verse of 
the Book of Daniel, and read with the same zest that 
would accompany the perusal of any other wonder- 
fully interesting tale of the long ago. It may be set 



84 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

down as a rule that the first reading of a new lesson 
should be for the purpose of gaining a broad general 
idea; later readings and study will help fix in the 
mind all the picturesque and extraordinary details. 
To increase the fund of mental pictures, pore over 
every good source book available ; root around in your 
History of the Hebrews; know something about the 
Persians as a people; realize the significance of the 
expression "the law of the Medes and the Persians, 
which altereth not/' and all the acquired facts will 
contribute toward a vivid presentation of the story, 
though you may not mention one of them. We need 
never fear knowing too much on any subject. 

It is said to be impossible to teach the whole or 
even the half of what one knows ; to a class of young 
children it would be inadvisable, to say the least, to 
tell a quarter of what the teacher ought to know 
about Daniel and his times if she would make her 
story live before the eyes of her hearers. An appo- 
site bit of description may be the only product of 
considerable research, but that one word or phrase 
may be to your story what the master-stroke of the 
artist's brush is to his picture. A certain version of 
the story of Belshazzar's Feast is recalled. The in- 
troduction was a remarkable word-picture that reared 
the magnificent banquet-hall before one's very eyes. 
But when the narrator spoke of the pale-faced boys 
who, in fear and trembling, served the feast from 
the gold and silver vessels of which their house of 
God had been despoiled, all the splendor of rich stuff 
and noble carvings, of jewels and of masses of flow- 



PREPARATION 85 

ers, seemed to fall into their proper place with the 
high light on the horror-stricken faces of the young 
Jews and on the walls bared for the mystic writing. 

Gaining Insight 

Other results of this wider knowledge are the 
teacher's better conception of the moral issues in- 
volved, the acquisition of a certain mental attitude, 
and the ability to feel the atmosphere of the times and 
conditions surrounding the hero. Only when that 
sympathetic viewpoint has been attained can we hope 
to make the king, Daniel, and the plotters into as 
vivid a word-picture for the children as did the 
author of the Book of Daniel for us; then they, too, 
will grasp, as we have done, the idea that God cares 
for His obedient children, and they will be inspired 
by the example of courage presented to them. They 
do not require that these truths be stated specifically, 
for they are quick to feel what may be intimated only 
by a carefully modulated tone. One Sunday after 
the story of the Creation had been told, in which 
God was spoken of as a kind king and Adam and 
Eve were designated as His children, a little girl 
pointed to the Holman Hunt picture, The Light of 
the World, and asked in a hushed voice, "Is that a 
picture of the kind king?" 

"Hidden Pictures" 

Having carefully read the Bible narrative, search 
out any hidden meanings of word or figure it may 
contain. The Scriptures are full of pictures invisible 



86 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

to the Western mind until the eyes have been opened 
to them by travel in the modern Oriental countries, 
or by extensive reading on the subject of their man- 
ners and customs. Expressions such as "Cast your 
burden on the Lord/' and "Eased my shoulder/' are 
without much content until one is reminded that ex- 
press companies are a modern institution, still prac- 
tically unknown in the East, and that the porter was 
the chief transfer company of Biblical times. When 
he could no longer support a heavy load unaided a 
characteristic cry would summon another porter to 
his side, and then, standing back to back, the burden 
was shifted to give the needed relief. Or, to take 
another example, Do we really appreciate the sym- 
bolism in "Let him take the water of life freely/' 
and of the words, "If any man thirst, let him come 
unto Me," in this country where clean drinking water 
and generally sanitary conditions are a matter of 
course? Where the vast majority of people have to 
buy drinking water almost as we buy milk, the man 
who pays for a skinful of water and says to the 
carrier, "Let all who will, drink of it/' is a public 
benefactor; there the value of pure water is known, 
and its use as a symbol of God's grace is of greater 
significance than here. 

Other Preliminaries 

Before writing out a story, or before attempting 
to tell it, it is well to review the facts, setting them 
down in a brief outline. This will be as little like 
the story as the skeleton is like the living contours 
of the man, but it will be a help to the teacher whose 



PREPARATION 87 

task it is to invest bare facts with charm and reality 
that her words may leave no doubt as to their inner 
meaning. Perhaps all this may seem too much trou- 
ble to take over a story whose telling will certainly 
not consume ten minutes; indeed, a four or five- 
minute story is quite long enough for your kinder- 
garten child, but its very shortness makes it impera- 
tive that every word be in its place and have full 
soliciting power. 

And, lastly, knowing the story, the teacher is now 
in a position to answer for herself a number of ques- 
tions that may have arisen from time to time. Why 
should I tell this story? What is its relation to the 
daily life and needs of my children ? What phase of 
it will have the closest bearing upon their environ- 
ment and upon their little temptations? Some one 
must answer these queries correctly if the story is to 
be winged to its mark. 



CHAPTER X 

PREPARATION OF THE PARTICULAR LESSON 

(Continued) 

The Title of the Story 

EVERY story needs a title — a sort of handle by 
which the children can conveniently grasp it. 
It ought to be suggestive, apt, specific, and attractive. 
Barrett, in his book, Short Story Writing, says that 
the title might almost be called the text of the story, 
which is built up around the central thought ex- 
pressed by it. 

Essential Elements of a Story 

Every story should contain a hero in whom the 
interest chiefly centers; a plot or problem, which is 
unfolded in the succession of events called the action, 
and a climax — the culmination or highest point of 
interest. Throughout the action the element of sus- 
pense has been carried forward; this the climax def- 
initely ends. Considering the story with reference 
to its form — it must have a beginning, a middle, and 
an end. In a story with a moral, the end is the most 
important part. The beginning introduces the char- 
acters, and opens out the scene before us, making the 
situation plain, either by the use of descriptive com- 



PREPARATION 89 

ments or by means of dialogue. The latter method 
is usually more immediately interest-compelling than 
the former, since children like to plunge into the 
action. A well-known story-teller was told by a 
youthful auditor that he liked her stories because she 
always began them in "the middle." And so the first 
sentence should call up images that will not only 
claim, but hold the hearer. 

The successful story-teller keeps to the main 
thread of his narrative, introducing only such facts 
and characters as have a direct value in developing 
the plot. All required explanations not properly a 
part of the story, though necessary to its compre- 
hension, should be made beforehand ; nothing is more 
confusing to the little child, or more disastrous to 
the effect of the story, than to break its continuity by 
interjecting what should have been given elsewhere. 
Events should follow each other in their right se- 
quence; nothing extraneous be admitted, nothing es- 
sential left out. Simplicity and purity of language 
are indispensable. In retelling stories, drawn from 
the Bible, it is best to keep as close to its inspired 
language as possible, since there is no well of purer 
English to drink from. 

Devices to Heighten Effect 

Some devices well known to the professional story- 
teller are distinctly useful to the Sunday-school 
teacher also — as, for example, the use of direct dis- 
course, which brings us face to face with the characters 
of the story, and heightens the effect of reality, pro- 
vided we make them talk naturally, in short sentences 



90 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

and to the point. Another is the repetition of certain 
rhymes or other groups of words. In the story of 
Daniel the words a O king, live for ever," used in 
saluting the king, add greatly to the picturesqueness 
of the scene by their flavor of the unusual. The re- 
peated use of the words "Thy God will deliver thee," 
changing only the form of the verb for the king's 
question as he put it to Daniel, gives a certain rhyth- 
mic swing that reenforces the impression made by 
the lesson thought, and strengthens its appeal to the 
child. We have only to recall the stories of our own 
nursery days for confirmation of the statement that 
those swinging refrains gave acute pleasure: Can't 
you hear yet, "I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow 
your house down," from that old favorite The Three 
Little Pigs? The House That Jack Built and the 
tale of The Little Old Woman and her Pig are ex- 
treme examples of the use of repetition. Their pop- 
ularity need not be dwelt upon, though it may lead 
us to the very logical conclusion that it is largely due 
to the child's rapidly increasing familiarity with the 
words ; as a rule we need to know persons and things 
before we can like them very much. 

Why Not Memorize the Story? 

Teachers are sometimes tempted to give stories in 
the exact words of the author; indeed, many of them 
are so inimitably told that at first sight it seems pre- 
sumptuous to attempt to change them in any way. 
But in all our dealings with humankind it is the 
direct personal touch that counts most heavily. Es- 
pecially is this true of all stories told primarily for 



PREPARATION 91 

their moral effect. Take, for example, the Bible 
stories, many of which were shaped into their pres- 
ent form by countless retellings around the camp- 
fires of the ancient Hebrews: they are indeed very 
gems, but they must be cut a little differently, and 
possibly they will need resetting, to make them com- 
prehensible to our youngest hearers. In some cases 
it will be necessary to amplify certain bare facts ; in 
others, to eliminate details, and to condense a story 
otherwise too long or too complicated for the specific 
requirements of the class. Stories from other sources 
will also often require alteration to make them fit 
the situation. To know the story perfectly makes one 
free to adapt it to the demands of the moment; to 
attempt to remember the exact words in which it is 
couched fetters one. Memorize catch words and ex- 
pressions whose exact phraseology it is expedient to 
retain, but for the rest rely upon your own resources 
of language and of illustration, and the story will 
better fit your conditions than it possibly could do 
otherwise. The exercise will amply repay you in in- 
creased mental stimulus, better developed powers of 
observation, and greater aptness of illustration. 

But at least do not read the story to your chil- 
dren because you are timid, or — we hesitate — lazy. 
Except with a very tiny class, reading a story is far 
less effective than telling it. The connection between 
teacher and taught is much closer when the former 
speaks directly to her pupils than when her eyes are 
traveling up and down a printed page with only oc- 
casional glances for them; and a stronger emotional 
appeal is made when, looking squarely at the child- 



92 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

ren, the teacher's facial expression, her properly 
modulated voice, and her simple gestures can all help 
to convey the inner meaning of the story. 

The Charm of the Story Told 

It is in the actual telling of the story that real 
magic is wrought: — the Druid Oak offers us the 
shade of his monster branches; the bee one watched 
yesterday exacting his toll from the heavy-headed 
clover blossoms is brother to the messenger of the 
gods; the shining courts of the Temple raise their 
massive sides before eyes that have been touched with 
an enchanted wand. For the story-teller who is full 
of her theme relates only what she herself has seen 
opening up before her mental vision; the pictorial 
quality of her ideas predominates, and if the medium 
between her and her eager little listeners is true sym- 
pathy and understanding, a new and delightful world 
opens its portals to them. A very happy Sunday 
morning is recalled. The story was that of the Feed- 
ing of the Five Thousand — a miracle recorded in 
each of the four Gospels. The account given in St. 
John, Chapter YI, ninth verse, reads: "There is a 
lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small 
fishes." That boy with his (presumed) luncheon of 
bread and fishes was an interesting figure to every 
child present. When the end of the story was reached, 
almost before the last word had been uttered, a boy 
of five — the liveliest member of the class — cried out, 
"Is that boy alive now? Where is he? Is he with 
Jesus in heaven?" And if you could have seen his 
face ! It was radiant with interest and enthusiasm. 



PREPARATION 93 

Cultivating One's Native Resources 

Every teacher owes it to herself to cultivate what- 
ever native ability she may possess as a story-teller, 
since it is one of her best intellectual qualifications, 
and in the work with little children an absolute es- 
sential to success. Good literary taste is partly in- 
born, and partly acquired through acquaintance with 
the classics. A healthful neglect of the ff best sellers" 
in favor of the masterpieces will do much to correct 
wrong standards. Spenser's Faerie Queene, Milton's 
Paradise Lost, Bacon's Essays, Shakespeare's plays, 
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, are but a few of the 
convincingly worth-while books that have survived the 
test of time. 

The use of suggestive and simple gestures is to 
be encouraged, because they wonderfully fill out the 
meaning of so much that would otherwise be obscure 
to little children, owing to their limited vocabulary 
and incomplete understanding of words — even of 
those in common use. To overcome self-conscious- 
ness, practice before a mirror may help, and is, at 
the same time, a good way by which to discover un- 
gainly and superfluous gestures that may have become 
habitual with one. It is much more pleasant, how- 
ever, to gather the little children of your neighbor- 
hood about you as often as possible and practise your 
art on them. Not only will your efforts be a source 
of enjoyment to them, but they will be repaid by the 
children's affection, and by your own increasing as- 
surance and self-confidence. But the teacher who 
has the power — either natural or acquired — to lose 
herself completely in her class and in her story, will 



94 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

neither hesitate to employ gestures where needful, 
nor will she lack that element of dramatic fire which 
comes from within. 

Some teachers, like some preachers, never gestic- 
ulate, but they use their voices intelligently: if a 
bird or a small animal is supposed to be talking, the 
voice may be thin and piping ; if it is the sly fox that 
speaks, they let voice and manner suggest his in- 
gratiating efforts to get the best of his victims; if 
the North Wind speaks, they make him roar and 
bluster. Very often words can be used whose sound 
resembles the thing signified; for example, such 
words as tinkle, twinkle, bells, blustering, splash, hor- 
rid. Imitative words, such as bow-wow, baa, ding- 
dong, tick-tock, mean more to the little kindergartner 
than do the verbs bark, and bleat, and ring. To be 
sure, all good things can be carried to the point of 
absurdity, but the danger of going to extremes is 
slight where enthusiasm is tempered by sincerity and 
common sense. 

Other Steps in Preparation 

Preparation includes, further, a search for suit- 
able pictures, models, and such other illustrative ma- 
terial as may be needed to clarify whatever new ideas 
the child is to receive ; for in his desire to grasp what 
you tell him he will at once attempt to translate it 
into terms of his own experience. The blackboard is 
a very good assistant at times, and offers no insur- 
mountable barriers even to the teacher who modestly 
thinks she cannot draw. Because the child's imagin- 
ation can be depended upon to supply some deficien- 



PREPARATION 95 

eies, the mastery of a few simple strokes will net very 
good results. Occasionally it helps to place a dim 
outline of the picture on the board, going over it in 
class at the proper time to bring it out; but, on the 
whole, it is better to let your drawing be more spon- 
taneous, growing before the children's eyes the while 
you supplement the work of your crayon with brief 
words of explanation or description. A few trials 
will prove that it is not so difficult a matter to talk 
with chalk as it seems to the uninitiated. 

On Ordering and Arranging the Room 

It still remains for the teacher to look about her 
classroom to make sure that it is in harmony with all 
the beautiful things she hopes to teach her little ones. 
Physical environment — mere walls and floors, and 
ceilings — has a subtle influence, that, like the force 
of the teacher's personality, is at work when we are 
barely conscious of it. Let the room be as bright 
and attractive as it can be made with beautiful and 
suitable pictures. Even a kitchen can be improved 
by the judicious use and disposition of screens to 
hide stoves and other incongruous furniture. One 
basement kindergarten is recalled where the teacher 
had concealed the great pipes running across the 
ceiling by hanging from it a crepe paper border of 
golden daffodils. On the little table at her side she 
kept a vase of fresh flowers, and the result was pleas- 
ing and cheerful in spite of the natural drawbacks of 
the place. 

There is no justification for using any Sunday- 
school room as a lumber-room, storing it with miscel- 



96 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

laneous pictures, old furniture not wanted elsewhere, 
and great heaps of chairs temporarily not in use. 
The child's ideas of church, of religion, and of God 
should not be associated with recollections of a room 
that is littered with rubbish of any sort. Love of 
the beautiful is nourished by beautiful things and 
helps the child to love what is good. 

In the kindergarten, let the small chairs be ar- 
ranged in a circle for the opening exercises ; or, if the 
room does not admit of that, let them form a hollow 
square or oblong. In the primary room, where it is 
impossible for the classes to be entirely separate for 
any part of the session, let the chairs be so placed 
about small tables (if you can possibly have the lat- 
ter) that, for the opening and closing exercises and 
other concerted work, all the children will be able 
easily to shift their positions, enabling them to face 
the leader or department-head. Each department 
should have its own wall-hooks at a convenient height, 
or suitable racks, where the child may leave his wraps 
on entering, and where he can find them without con- 
fusion at the close of the session. 

In Conclusion 

As a last word, the following quotation from Dr. 
Marianna C. Brown's How To Plan a Lesson is given : 

"No teaching compares in importance with the 
influence upon the child of lifting it for a while 
every Sunday into the consciousness of spiritual real- 
ities and of the divine presence. Before going to 
Sunday-school we must deliberately put ourselves into 
such a mood" (the Sunday mood of which Dr. Brown 



PREPARATION 97 

speaks). "We must treat the opening exercises in a 
way to put our scholars in such a mood. We must 
speak of secular and week-day matters, not as though 
catering to the child's lack of consecration, but as 
though the spiritual world permeated all. While feel- 
ing in warm touch with all that is human and natural 
to childhood as with that which is blessed and sancti- 
fied from above, we must at the same time be in such 
close relation with the spiritual that no ordinary Sun- 
day-school incidents can take away that conscious- 
ness. The lesson's spiritual truth must be taught in 
the divine presence, and with divine aid." 



CHAPTER XI 

TEACHING THE LESSON 
Apperception 

APPEKCEPTION is that form of mental activity 
by which new ideas are received into fellowship 
with the already familiar, and grafted npon it. This 
mental assimilation is possible, however, only where 
the mind of the learner is already stored with facts 
of knowledge or experience, or both, that will be use- 
ful in interpreting, modifying, and absorbing the new 
material presented to it. 

For this reason an important part of the prepara- 
tion is the instructor's effort to find out what each 
child knows of a given subject before attempting to 
lead him further on the way to knowledge. Our ideas 
of what the child ought to know are not a safe guide ; 
nor can we rely upon our recollections of what we 
knew as children; for we have forgotten how halting 
and wearisome the first steps were, and how imper- 
fectly we saw what lay about us on every hand. More- 
over, modern life presents so many diverse phases 
that children living within a stone's throw of each 
other may be surrounded by utterly different con- 
ditions in the home. This is especially true of those 
living in great cities, whose environment offers a 
marked contrast to that of the country-bred child. 



TEACHING THE LESSON 99 

The city child will probably know very little of 
nature or rural occupations, and his imagination will 
have a small supply of facts to draw upon for the 
background of your story, when its scene is laid in 
the country. On the other hand, the country boy 
or girl has the book of natural history opened before 
him all the time; the barnyard creatures are his 
friends; violets, buttercups, and sweet clover blos- 
soms have yielded their beauty and their scent to 
him, and the birds and bees have taught him some 
of their secrets. His difficulty will be to picture a 
New York City skyscraper, or a subway tunnel, or a 
tenement house in a congested district of the lower 
east side. 

What the Six-year-old Knows 

Educationists attach so much importance to the 
subject of what children know on entering school, 
that they have made many tests to ascertain from 
the children direct what basis the home life has pro- 
vided for the teacher to build upon. The report of 
such an investigation made by Dr. Hall in Boston 
is authority for some of the statements following. 

Four-fifths of the children questioned did not 
know what a bee-hive is ; not quite one-fourth of them 
knew a crow; the number of those familiar with the 
bluebird was slightly larger; only about one-third 
were acquainted with ants, and not quite half of 
them knew sheep; even the hen was a. stranger to 
nineteen per cent. Less than eight per cent, knew 
growing wheat, eleven per cent, knew the willow tree, 
about seven children of every hundred recognized the 
oak, and less than half, growing dandelions. More 



100 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

than half the children were ignorant of the location 
of ribs, ankles, and waist, and the words dew, seasons, 
hail, rainbow, and sunrise struck no responsive chord 
in most of them. Many curious ideas about the sky, 
the sun, moon, and stars were discovered, and equally 
fanciful were their notions concerning thunder, 
clouds, and rain. 

To us their common religious concepts are espe- 
cially interesting. Children will tell us that God 
makes the chairs, the windows, and even the pic- 
ture-frames on the walls of the Sunday-school room. 
"He makes lamps, babies, dogs, trees, money, etc., 
and the angels work for Him." The child imagines 
God as a person, looking like someone, perhaps, that 
he knows, and he ascribes human feelings and fail- 
ings to Him. A boy of three, known to the writer, 
was looking forward to a May party in the park on 
the occasion of his coming birthday, but when it fin- 
ally arrived the day brought rain with it. The little 
lad jumped out of bed, ran to the window, and cried 
out, "Oh ! I guess God forgot this was Ira's birthday." 

The Value of Informal Conversation 

But we cannot afford to deal in generalities. 
Every teacher needs to find out from the individual 
members of her class what they know, and to secure 
such a response from them as will indicate that they 
are themselves conscious of their facts; for, if new 
knowledge is to be assimilated, both the old and the 
new must be present in consciousness. Some time 
before the new lesson is taught there must be a period 
in which children can be encouraged to express them- 



TEACHING THE LESSON 101 

selves freely within certain bounds regulated by the 
teacher. They will usually be found ready to talk 
about the things that interest them and are familiar 
to them, and what they say will furnish us with a 
key to their social environment and home influences, 
and will enable us to meet them on their own intel- 
lectual plane, instead of talking over their heads or 
failing to come up to their standard. Also, by laying 
bare his interests, the child will supply us with a 
point of contact between the old or already familiar, 
and the new lesson we hope to teach him. Naturally, 
the success of this period will depend in a great meas- 
ure upon the teacher's skill in controlling the trend 
of the conversation without dominating it, and in so 
turning irrelevant remarks to account that they will 
accentuate a point she wishes brought out, strengthen 
a connection between old and new elements, or bring 
more clearly to mind what is related to the thought 
of the day and the instruction-material. 

The Question 

And how is the teacher to start the ball rolling, 
and keep it in motion, except by use of that ancient 
and honorable tool of the pedagogue — the question, 
whose value in all teaching is not to be over-esti- 
mated? It is the password to "Memory-Hold-the- 
Door," by whom images of past lessons and exper- 
iences are summoned before the attention, and it 
opens up the pupil's mind to new ideas or to new 
phases of old ones. Like any other tool, it needs to 
be kept bright and shining ; in other words, the ques- 
tion that is really worth while is a product of careful 



102 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

forethought. It should be as brief as possible; sug- 
gestive — not telling the answer, but stimulating the 
questioned to active mental search for it. It should 
be incisive, capable of but one interpretation, and 
definitely put the very first time to avoid confusing 
the child. In order to keep the entire class alert, it 
is well to state the question before naming the child 
who is to give the answer. We need the question that 
tests memory to make sure there is something in the 
mind that will help interpret the new lesson ; the stim- 
ulating question, to arouse the child's curiosity so 
that he will anticipate our message with eagerness. 

The Child as Teacher 

The child's spontaneous activities are an index to 
his interests, and those that are constructive may 
rightly be regarded as of lasting value, notwithstand- 
ing this idea is almost diametrically opposed to that 
of an earlier generation. 

Dr. Hyde shows us the child's viewpoint at dif- 
ferent stages of his development, in an interesting 
little book — The Teacher's Philosophy — in which he 
divides school life into five periods, describing the 
dominant interests of each; and points out the cor- 
respondence between these stages and the five great 
systems of philosophy the world has known. The 
primary child is an Epicurean; wherefore in kinder- 
garten and primary grades the appeal should be di- 
rected to his present interests, and the will trained 
through securing attention to those things that are 
interesting for their own sake, not for their promise 



TEACHING THE LESSON 103 

of some future good. That is, in training the minds 
and wills of children of this age, if we would work 
in harmony with nature, we should make use of those 
agencies that promise pleasure — gratification of in- 
stinctive likes. This does not mean that the child is 
never to be called upon to do anything difficult, but 
it requires us to make our appeal to his love of ac- 
tivity, his desire to experiment with things — to handle 
them, to take them apart, to hear them if they are 
capable of producing sound. Our tendency in the 
past has been to ignore the intellectual value of touch 
proper, and to forget that all the senses have a three- 
fold significance. 

How To Secure Attention 

Who ever saw a healthy child sit quiet for half 
an hour because he was commanded to do it ? Yet a 
lively five-year-old boy of our acquaintance, on his 
own initiative, placed a chair in front of a clock and 
watched it for thirty minutes, waiting for the cuckoo 
to call the hour, because his curiosity had been 
aroused when the half -hour struck. 

In the natural order of things attention follows 
upon the heels of interest, and although its physical 
attitude is not necessarily one of immobility, the act 
itself involves directing and holding the mental pow- 
ers fixed upon a certain object. When we attend, we 
do so either under the compulsion of an outside 
stimulus, present to one or more of the senses, as, 
for example, when the sudden banging of a door 
causes us momentarily to drop our work, or we do 



104 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

so at the command of the will. This second sort of 
attention is unlike the first (which is effortless, pas- 
sive, involuntary) in that it is an active, voluntary 
concentration of the mind. Professor James has told 
us that it is never sustained for more than a few 
seconds at a time; that as its object slips away from 
the focal point in consciousness, by consecutive efforts 
of the will it must be called back again and again. 

But will power in the sense of its control to make 
it subservient to useful ends, primarily because they 
are useful, is lacking in the young child, in whom 
freedom is constrained by instinct, impulse, and sug- 
gestion. The infant's earliest observation of the 
lights and shadows dancing on the wall is entirely 
passive and accidental. When you clap your hands 
to gain the ear of your class, you are successful be- 
cause the waves of air have passed their motion on 
to the sensitive inner ear, and the mind has inter- 
preted the unexpected sound. In neither case has 
the will of the child been called into play; if inter- 
est in what he was doing is stronger than his interest 
in what you are saying, the school child will imme- 
diately return to his former occupation. He is de- 
ficient in the mental and moral stamina requisite to 
purposeful attention at the call of duty, though the 
play activities of children and their use of the Mont- 
essori material demonstrate a capacity for prolonged 
application to one thing, when their inner needs are 
being satisfied by it. And so both kindergarten and 
primary teachers endeavor to plan their work along 
lines of least resistance as indicated by the child's 



TEACHING THE LESSON 105 

native interests, in order to win his effortless and 
involuntary attention as often as possible. They ap- 
peal to his curiosity; they challenge his desire to 
know and to do; and they give him numerous op- 
portunities to make independent discoveries. 



CHAPTER XII 

TEACHING THE LESSON (Continued) 
Approaching the New Lesson 

ONE aspect of the circle or preparatory talk — its 
usefulness in becoming acquainted with the chil- 
dren — has been dwelt upon. It serves another pur- 
pose. Although it is not the time for formal instruc- 
tion, to make the presentation of the lesson story in- 
telligible and attractive, it may be necessary in this 
period to explain the meaning of new words, or to 
describe strange customs. The cooperation of the 
class may be counted on for help, since children often 
have curious facts stored away in memory that need 
only to be drawn out and enlarged upon in order to 
make them useful in establishing connections, and in 
bringing out contrasts. Where the story is one of 
a series a brief review of those that have gone be- 
fore is in order, and may be secured either by draw- 
ing out the leading points of each in response to 
questions, or from the repetition of the earlier stories 
by members of the class. 

Concreteness Essential 

At times it will be economical and profitable to 
introduce pictures and models, and such other illus- 
trative material as may be available, because your 



TEACHING THE LESSON 107 

kindergarten child and your primary child think in 
pictures more largely than in words, which are, after 
all, only symbols for things, and mean nothing unless 
they can be given content by memory, or by the con- 
structive imagination. Also, a word imperfectly un- 
derstood is quickly forgotten. During Lent one year, 
in a primary class, a short missionary talk was given 
each Sunday. On. one occasion a Japanese house, 
with its straw roof and sliding walls, was briefly de- 
scribed. The following Sunday, when the children 
were called upon to tell what they remembered about 
the daily life of the Japanese, a bright little girl re- 
sponded to the effect that they live in houses some- 
thing like stables. Evidently the oral description of 
the open sides of the house had suggested to her the 
wide-open doors of a barn. 

The Model a Practical Help 

How many modern city children have ever seen a 
flock of sheep, or a well, or even a twentieth century 
flour-mill ? The pasteboard model of a sheepf old, the 
tiny model water-jar, and the primitive eastern mill 
all open up new fields of thought, and assist in the 
formation of correct mental pictures without which 
there can be no clear understanding. On one occa- 
sion, as a preparation for some of the Old Testa- 
ment stories, the model sheepfold, with its paste- 
board shepherd and flock of sheep, was brought out 
and examined. The sand table was the meadow slop- 
ing down from the hills moulded at one end; a little 
brook ran along one side, and the sheepfold was set 
up in the corner farthest from the hills. The chil- 



108 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

dren placed the sheep on the hillsides, had them fol- 
low their shepherd to the brook, and, when evening 
came, pnt them inside the fold with the shepherd 
mounting guard. During all this time there was con- 
versation regarding the sheep and the lambs, their 
appearance, their white wool, their food, their tim- 
idity, and the shepherd's love and care for them. 
After this becoming acquainted" exercise, when the 
song "Little Lambs so White and Fair" was taught 
and sung, there was not only a realization of its 
meaning, as far as the facts about the sheep were 
concerned, but its spiritual truth could be appre- 
hended, and its closing lines, "Heavenly Father, may 
we be, Thus obedient unto Thee," were more earnestly 
felt than would otherwise have been possible. 

For the school that can neither buy nor make- 
models, the blackboard will often fill the breach. At 
any rate, it will help round out the child's impres- 
sions gained through hearing only; or, as some one 
has said, through the "ear-gate" alone. 

One lesson that it was a pleasure to teach ob- 
jectively, the Parable of the Sower, entailed the use 
of a window-box and seeds. There was first a gen- 
eral talk about the soil, its preparation for the seeds, 
the rocky places, and the hard paths; and a discus- 
sion as to the probable growth of the seeds under 
each of the conditions named — to all of which the 
children contributed their opinions freely. The work 
of the sun and the rain was touched upon, various 
kinds of seeds were displayed, as were also pictures 
of growing grain, and a reproduction of Millet's 
Sower. After all the children had felt of the fine, 



TEACHING THE LESSON 109 

soft earth, each was allowed to plant a few seeds in 
the box. It need hardly be said interest in that 
lesson was keen, and the story well remembered and 
accurately retold by several of the children on succeed- 
ing Sundays. Its application to their lives was ex- 
pressed in the familiar lines, 

"Kind hearts are the gardens, 
Kind thoughts are the roots, 
Kind words are the flowers, 
Kind deeds are the fruits," 

which they readily learned after a few repetitions. 

Telling the Story 

Such constructive preparation recognizes that the 
child's understanding of the new lesson is aided by 
his present acquisitions, and furnishes his senses with 
the materials that will enable him to visualize the 
pictures contained in your words; for although im- 
agination rears her head in the clouds, her feet stand 
upon a foundation of reality. 

Once entered upon the story, the teacher should 
continue to its end without interruption for any cause, 
but should stop before she makes the fatal error of 
pointing the moral. Sometimes a word of comment 
or a simple question may be useful in directing the 
child's thoughts inward, but, ordinarily, from the 
right kind of story told in a straightforward, clear 
and sympathetic manner — showing that the teacher 
had a grasp of the childish way of looking at things — 
each child will be able to draw the proper lesson. All 
may not get the same point exactly, because each 
one's interpretation will depend upon his individual 



110 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

mental and spiritual bias; but this enhances rather 
than lessens the value of the story. After a pause of 
a few seconds to let its significance sink into con- 
sciousness, the Bible verse or hymn, conveying the 
underlying truth of the lesson or series of lessons, 
may be said or sung by teacher and pupils together. 
When the picture illustrating the story has been 
shown or distributed and commented upon, the chil- 
dren may again recite the verses, thereby strength- 
ening the association between them, the picture, and 
the lesson story. 

The Easter Story Told by the Children 

But there are times even in the kindergarten when 
the lesson may be developed through questioning, 
supplemented by very little explanation and descrip- 
tion on the part of the teacher. One year in a cer- 
tain school the Easter lesson was taught successfully 
in this way. Naturally a few of the older children 
had some of the facts at their command, and they 
were more or less familiar with the hymns used. All 
gathered about the sand table. Using the third and 
fourth kindergarten gifts, at the teacher's dictation, 
the children built a wall to represent that of Jerusa- 
lem. The Palm Sunday story was reviewed, and the 
children repeated the words "Hosanna to the Son of 
David." In a very few words the teacher bridged 
over the days between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, 
whose events were touched upon only in the singing 
of two stanzas of "There is a Green Hill Far Away," 
in which the children joined. After this the thread 
of the narrative was again taken up most briefly, and 



TEACHING THE LESSON 111 

a model of the tomb — placed in one corner of the 
sand table — was examined by the children. The re- 
mainder of the story was carried forward brightly 
and joyously, principally by means of the children's 
responses, and was concluded with the singing of the 
Easter hymn. 

Children in these first years are always greatly 
interested in all festivals and holidays, beginning 
with their birthdays and culminating in the Birthday 
of the Saviour. For this reason it is customary in 
most schools to tell the Easter and Christmas stories 
every year in the lower grades. The teaching of the 
latter lesson presents no difficulty whatever, nor need 
the former if we will but turn to nature, which fur- 
nishes, both in the plant and insect worlds, many in- 
stances of apparent death from which, later, abund- 
ant and beautiful life will spring. Nature's winter 
sleep, the seed, the bulb, the inert chrysalis, all seem- 
ingly lifeless, represent the cessation of activity, not 
the cessation of life; and each in its own good time 
will awake from sleep to achieve another miracle. 
The child's experience of these facts of nature must 
help, though it be but dimly, to an apprehension of 
the great spiritual fact of the Eesurrection. Kinder- 
garten children will be aided to an understanding by 
acting out the life-story of the butterfly, and of the 
plant growing and blossoming. 

Association of Ideas 

Every one of us must have observed that certain 
words, or thoughts, or sensations, have the power to 
recall to mind particular events, or other words, 



112 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

thoughts, or sensations. A friend tells us of an ex- 
perience that she had on a cold day; instantly we 
are reminded of an incident in our lives which de- 
pended for its color upon the fact that the tem- 
perature was very low. Perhaps you desire to recall 
the third stanza of a poem with which you are famil- 
iar, but in order to do so you must first recite the 
first and second stanzas ; or, before leaving your home, 
you tie a string around your finger to remind you 
that you wish to buy a certain article when you reach 
the department-store you are about to visit. When 
you next see the string it will remind you of the 
article, because your act built up a connection be- 
tween the two. In all these cases the connection and 
recurrence of the various ideas mentioned are due to 
the number and strength of the associations binding 
them together. One idea suggests another, either be- 
cause of its contiguous position in consciousness or 
because of some inherent likeness that connects the 
two. Therefore it is our duty as teachers so to present 
new ideas that when called up by memory they will 
appear in their proper sequence. 

Teaching the Easter Hymn, 

One well-remembered morning the little nature- 
talk beautifully paved the way for the learning of 
the Easter song. It was a lovely sunshiny Sunday 
that spoke to every child of the coming spring. They 
commented on the blossoming magnolias, contrasted 
the conditions then prevailing with those that had 
obtained in the fall and throughout the cold days of 
winter; the roots and the seeds, snug under their 



TEACHING THE LESSON 113 

coverlet of snow and leaves, were mentioned. But 
now the sun is warm, the snow has disappeared, the 
bluebird's song is heard, the gentle rains fall, and 
the seeds in their dark beds receive all these messages 
promising new life. The raindrops sink into the 
earth, moistening the seeds, that the tiny leaves form- 
ing inside may finally break through and push their 
way into the world of light and air. So much inter- 
est and enthusiasm were displayed by the children 
that the teacher, under the inspiration of the moment, 
asked, "How would you like to be the seeds upon the 
stalk in the fall, and wake up in the spring when 
the bluebird calls ?" They were delighted. Their sug- 
gestions, together with one or two from the teacher, 
were all the directions needed, so that the play was 
really almost entirely spontaneous. The little flowers 
stood very straight beside their kindergarten chairs 
until North Wind (impersonated by the teacher) 
came and blew the seeds all about the room. As the 
wind died away, the children impersonating seeds 
dropped quietly into their places; they closed their 
eyes, their heads drooped — the winter sleep hushed 
all things. At last a chord from the piano — a poor 
substitute for the song of a bird! — stirred them to 
signs of life. One by one the little heads looked up, 
and smiling faces turned from side to side. This was 
the moment to teach 

"The little flowers came from the ground, 
At Easter time, at Easter time, 
They raised their heads and looked around, 
At happy Easter time. 



114 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

"And then each little bud did say. 
'Good people bless this holy day, 

For Christ is ris'n the angels say, 

This holy, holy Easter day. 5 " 

Other Hymns Taught 

The play described is too elementary for the pri- 
mary grades; nor would all songs lend themselves to 
this treatment, even in the kindergarten. Ordinarily 
the new song may be sung, the psalm or other selec- 
tion for memorization be read through, by the leader ; 
new words should be explained; the children should 
be led to discover the thought of each stanza and to 
put it into original language, and to visualize in order 
the different pictures contained therein. This is to 
avoid confusion in the sequence of the memory images, 
and the substitution of associated ones. Before teach- 
ing the words: 

"Above the clear blue sky, 
In heaven's bright abode, 
The angel host on high 

Sing praises to their God: 
Alleluia ! 
They love to sing 
To God their King 
Alleluia!" 

there was a brief talk about angels, in which chil- 
dren and teacher participated, and a number of pic- 
tures of angels were shown, among them reproduc- 
tions of the Fra Angelico series, of the Guardian 
Angel, and of the Apparition to the Shepherds. When 
the words strongly convey feelings of joy, or grati- 
tude, or happiness, try to create about the children 



TEACHING THE LESSON 115 

an atmosphere that will naturally evoke a similar 
emotion. Thus the words are filled with meaning, 
and immediately become a vehicle for the expression 
of feelings that are a reality. 

The repetition, the drill, necessary to fix the words 
permanently in the memory is the unpleasant phase 
of this work, because our ideal is temporarily sub- 
ordinated to it. Where the children are old enough 
to read, wall-charts may be used to good advantage, 
and the text of new hymns may be supplied to them 
for pasting in their books. In some schools it may 
be possible to enlist the assistance of parents or older 
6rothers and sisters in teaching songs to the little 
kindergartners. 

As to the melody, this will be learned by rote, 
either from hearing one of the teachers sing it, or 
from hearing it played on the piano or organ, as the 
case may be. Simplicity and well marked time divi- 
sion commend themselves to the childish ear and 
memory. Liveliness is another characteristic that 
appeals to the majority of children, though quality 
need never be sacrificed to it. If the song to be 
taught has been selected far enough ahead, it is fre- 
quently practicable for the accompanist to play it in 
whole or in part at those times when tranquilizing 
music is required, as before the lesson-story is pre- 
sented, and before the session is formally opened. 
The influence of the right kind of music — a few 
measures of a well-loved song, or of some classic com- 
position, very softly played before prayers, will go 
far toward establishing harmony between body and 
soul, and creating that devotional atmosphere we so 



116 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

much desire during the service of worship and praise ; 
and will deepen those feelings of peace and joy and 
reverence that are such positive forces in the moral 
life, and are distinguishing features in the Christian's 
life. 

Maintaining Order 

Nothing has been said on the subject of discipline, 
because, if all the requirements have been met, the 
normal child will do what is expected of him, and 
what he ought to do in Sunday-school. If chairs are 
uncomfortably large or small, if the room is too hot 
or too cold, if the classes are so large as to make at- 
tention to individuals out of the question, or if lesson 
materials and methods of instruction are unsuitable, 
there will be fidgeting and restlessness, and even dis- 
order. As a rule children want to obey ; but if, after 
everything possible has been done to insure right con- 
ditions, a child here and there does not respond as 
he should, a special study of his case must be made. 
We may be able to reach him through an appeal to 
his desire to please his parents or teacher, or, in the 
case of older children, by rousing the emulative spirit. 
One kindergarten child, who was given to interrupt- 
ing the programme at any and all times with inco- 
herent talk about his clothes, or the Fire Department, 
or whatever fancy dictated, was finally induced to 
give quiet attention through his liking for the hand- 
work. On one or two occasions he was deprived of 
the privilege of pasting the lesson picture or of work- 
ing otherwise with the rest of the class, and this had 
a very salutary effect. Sometimes a child's naughti- 
ness is the result of "exaggerated ego," and letting- 



TEACHING THE LESSON 117 

alone is the best medicine: when he finds that he 
cannot attract attention to himself, he gives up try- 
ing and joins his fellows. 

"With normal children, if poor order is the rule, 
the teacher or head of the department must look to 
herself and her methods for the reason. It is her 
privilege and her responsibility so to manipulate en- 
vironment and teaching material that their disciplin- 
ary value will be arrayed on the side of law and order. 
The behavior of young children is largely a reflection 
of what they see about them. If those in authority 
set an example of punctuality, regularity, good- 
breeding, and Christian courtesy and expect the same 
of the children, very few rules will be necessary (none 
in the kindergarten), but certain right customs will 
develop and will be zealously observed, for children 
have a great respect for custom. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE DOING SIDE OF THE LEARNING 
PROCESS 

EDUCATION is a far bigger and better thing 
than the absorption of facts and knowledge; it 
is the bringing to perfection of the constructive pow- 
ers of man, the development of his threefold nature 
for self-control and efficiency in every situation that 
life may present. The aim of Sunday-school teaching 
is the formation of vital character permeated by a 
delicate responsiveness to Christian ideals of conduct. 
It is not enough that we give our children ideas that 
are mere abstractions to be talked about and admired 
as things apart from self, we must hold before them 
ideals that will have a soliciting power for the will 
sufficiently strong to overcome all contrary sugges- 
tions; for "action is the perfection and publication 
of thought." 

Habit the Conserver 

Because it would be very costly, and even fatal 
sometimes, if our every act demanded the exercise of 
the will, Nature has provided us with a nervous sys- 
tem upon which the processes of doing tend to im- 
press themselves in such a way that, with every repe- 
tition of a particular stimulus, its response comes 
more and more readily, until finally the act becomes 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 119 

automatic, or habitual, demanding no forethought. 
Other bases of habit, especially in young children, 
are instinct and impulse. The useful instincts are 
the material from which good habits may be made; 
tendencies of the opposite sort need to be checked, 
and their energy diverted into other and more profit- 
able channels. 

Even the baby is subject to the laws governing 
habit, and long before he enters the kindergarten a 
strong bias has been given to his character for good 
or for bad by the wisdom or foolishness of his par- 
ents in training him. Where instinct and impulse 
rule, moral ideas and theories unconnected with daily 
practice cannot be expected to have great weight; 
moral ideas must grow out of moral acts, and the two 
need to hinge so closely upon each other, as the result 
of both exercise and example, that, no matter what 
inhibiting idea may arise, the right reaction will be 
assured. Therefore, the training of young children 
calls for emphasis on the doing side, and for guid- 
ance in the place of prohibition, that the process of 
character-building may be free and adequate. The 
Sunday-school is particularly prone to lay too much 
stress on instruction and the stirring of the emotions, 
forgetful that "It is not," as James says, "in the 
moment of their forming, but in the moment of their 
producing motor effects that resolves and aspirations 
communicate the new set of habits to the brain/' 

Expressional Activity in the Sunday-school 

There are three phases of self-expression that are, 
or should be, indissolubly bound up with our Sunday- 



120 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDEEN 

school work, which, show the required progression 
from concrete to abstract, from individualistic and 
selfish to altruistic, from the conception of self as 
the center of things to the consciousness of God and 
the capacity to know and find Him. The first of 
these is self-expression related to the lessons taught; 
the second reveals itself in service to others; and the 
third, in Worship. 

Expressional Activities Related to the Lessons 

It is not what we give the child, but what he gets 
out of our lesson presentations that is of value in 
arousing moral impulses to reproduce in life the 
truths conveyed in song and story. The extent to 
which facts are intelligible to him is a matter of 
vaguest conjecture until he has told us, either orally 
or otherwise, what he knows and thinks. The use 
of various kinds of handwork and objective material 
in the preparatory steps of teaching has been dis- 
cussed ; now it is to be considered from the standpoint 
of its usefulness as a test of knowledge. We may 
call upon the child to recite Bible verses and songs 
and prayers; we may ask him to retell the story in 
his own words; or we may give him pencil and paper 
or other materials with which to illustrate or to re- 
construct his recollections of it. Here, at last, the 
child is face to face with himself, with what he knows 
and feels; and his response, full or meagre, will be 
indicative of the impressions that have been made 
upon him. If he has failed to grasp the right idea, 
we shall discover that fact, and be enabled to offer 
the correction needed; if his conceptions are right, 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 121 

they will be augmented and vivified by this attempt 
at reproduction. 

Speech and song are obviously practical, and are 
universally admitted to be good and appropriate 
forms of self-expression for the Sunday-school, and 
there is never a Sunday when they are out of place. 
But persons accustomed to work with young children 
understand how difficult it often is for them to col- 
lect and speak their thoughts. They like to recite a 
text or verse learned by heart, and are usually will- 
ing to repeat after the teacher whatever she may 
dictate to them phrase by phrase; but many failures 
precede the successful retelling of the story by the 
primary or kindergarten child, against which inabil- 
ity to recall the facts and timidity and shyness most 
frequently militate. 

If the story has been pictured in any way, the 
average child can reproduce it more easily than after 
merely hearing it, because visual and tactual images 
are ordinarily more stable than auditory images. The 
story of Abraham entertaining the three angels was 
told one day to the kindergarten class, and a poster 
picture illustrating the event was made. Each child 
received a mounting-card, paste, and brush, a small 
triangle of white paper to represent the tent, and 
four strips of gummed paper, three of one color and 
one of another. Sitting at their tables with their 
materials before them, the children reviewed the facts 
of the story in a conversational manner, and while 
they spoke of Abraham's nomadic life and described 
his tent home they pasted the white triangle at one 
side of the card. Then each placed the strip repre- 



122 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

senting Abraham where he thought the tent door 
should be, and, a few inches to the right, the other 
strips were placed to symbolize the three strangers. 
Several months later the kindergartner displayed one 
of the posters and asked for the story, which a girl 
of five told from beginning to end without hesitation. 
The tendency to encourage spontaneous verbal expres- 
sion in connection with that of the hands is one of 
the best features of manual work. 

Kinds of Handwork Applicable 

Expressional activities need to be as carefully 
graded and adapted as any other department of school 
work. Among those forms of handwork suitable for 
the kindergarten are 

(a) Model handling, 

(b) Laying forms of beauty, 

( c ) Mounting pictures and other illustrative material, 

( d ) Stiek-laying, 

( e ) Drawing, and coloring with crayons or water colors, 

( f ) Poster-making, 

(g) Folding and tearing paper, and paper-cutting, 
(h) Sand table picture work, 

( i ) Building. 

Some of the above are equally suitable for the primary 
grades of the Sunday-school, notably a, c, and e; as 
are also (1) Modeling in clay or plasticene; (2) 
Printing; and (3) Writing. 

Much of the regular kindergarten and school ma- 
terial is necessarily used, but usually without refer- 
ence to its purpose in the week-day school. When 
the third and fourth gifts are used to build a city 
wall or the high seat of honor for Joseph's father, 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 123 

it is not with the idea of training sense or muscle, 
but to make these objects more real, and to give the 
children a concrete background for the lesson truth. 
That the desire to create and make something new is 
gratified only adds to the richness of the experience. 
As a rule, it may be stated, whatever adds to the for- 
mation of correct ideas of the facts in the story also 
enforces its lesson. 

Enough has been said about models to demon- 
strate their usefulness in the kindergarten; the pri- 
mary child needs them also, and will like to repro- 
duce them in clay or plasticene. Poster work is ef- 
fective and useful in both kindergarten and primary 
grades, and not too difficult for the older children to 
try at home. Paper tearing and folding require 
delicacy of touch, exactness, and neatness, if satis- 
factory results are desired; too much must not be 
expected of the little kindergartner. Objects made 
in this way may be mounted singly or in groups to 
tell a story. Where colored papers are used, good and 
artistic colors should be selected. 

Drawing 

This is a natural outlet for the child's construc- 
tive activity, and a vent for his artistic impulses. 
Almost before he can hold a pencil he wants to 
"draw." He likes it so much that he frequently has 
to be restrained from covering the walls as far as he 
can reach with the evidence of his activity. No sub- 
ject is too complicated or difficult for him, because 
his fancy enables him to see what he wishes to see in 
his lines. Not long since a four-year-old girl handed 



124 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

the writer a tiny piece of gray cardboard with the 
remark, "Here's a picture of the Virgin Mary and 
the Baby Jesus that I made." It was the usual child- 
ish attempt — two crude circles for the heads, straight 
lines for the arms — but, crude as it was, to the little 
girl it was a picture. If the teacher is sympathetic 
and helpful these early drawings will answer a use- 
ful purpose, and, as his love of the beautiful grows 
and his power to represent it increases, the child will 
produce more artistic results. Sully says of chil- 
dren's drawing that "It is not wholly a product of 
our influence and education, but shows itself in its 
essential characteristics as a spontaneous self-taught 
activity of childhood, which takes its rise, indeed, in 
the play impulse." 

It is this very spontaneity that makes of drawing 
so ideal an occupation for the purposes of the school. 
Drawing a picture for the story will interest intensely, 
and give opportunity for the play of originality and 
imagination. During the circle talk, or the informal 
conversation of the primary department, members of 
the class may be asked to go to the board and draw 
something that will remind the others of David, or of 
Christmas, or of whatever subject may be under con- 
sideration. The number of volunteers offering their 
services will indicate the popularity of this form of 
self-expression. Drawing and painting and coloring 
with crayons are particularly well adapted for the use 
of primary classes, and may be done either at Sun- 
day-school or at home ; but preferably at home on ac- 
count of the shortness of the session. 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 125 

The Use of Pictures 

Except in the case of very young children, for 
whom your narrative is less a story at times than a 
description of the various, figures depicted, it is best 
to withhold the lesson picture until after the story 
has been told, unless it be to call attention to some 
detail that will clarify your presentation. Exper- 
ience proves that children are very easily attracted to 
good pictures, and that colored ones make a stronger 
appeal than the black and white prints. Most of the 
better colored prints are prohibitively high in price, 
but the Tissot series has been reproduced in a very 
inexpensive form, and may be especially commended 
for historical accuracy in showing dress, manners, 
and customs. 

The details of a picture should be clear and large 
enough to be easily distinguishable — the child wants 
to understand what he is looking at. Perhaps this 
is one reason the Madonna and Child and the Holy 
Family are so dear to the childish heart; that they 
represent a comprehensible aspect of life is another. 
In the case of pictures bearing on the Life of Christ 
it is well to show the conceptions of different artists 
to prevent the children's acquiring wrong impres- 
sions. The many excellent reproductions of fine 
paintings appearing from time to time in certain 
Sunday newspapers and in the magazines are a source 
that the children should be encouraged to draw upon 
in making collections. Very few of them fail to pore 
over the "comic" sections of the Sunday paper, and 
it would certainly be much more advantageous to 



126 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

them if they could be induced to search the magazine 
and pictorial sections for illustrations related to their 
Sunday-school work. 

Pictures Related to Self-expression 

In reviewing a series of lessons, large copies of 
the lesson pictures may be tacked upon the screen so 
that all can see them, and different children may be 
asked to point out the various persons and to tell the 
stories. Even the babies will want to go forward to 
touch the Christ Child's picture. The general review 
in some schools is conducted by means of a stereop- 
ticon and colored slides, many of which are very beau- 
tiful. As the pictures are thrown on the screen, in- 
dividual children or classes are called upon to recite 
the appropriate Bible verses. 

To impress the lesson story, mounting the picture 
is recommended for all young children, and may ap- 
propriately be done during the session. The pictures 
should be pasted in blank books or on loose sheets, 
perforated for tying, so that all may be preserved to 
form a permanent record of the year's work. Either 
gummed stickers or paste can be used successfully. 
If the latter is put in small jars or on bits of paper, 
and applied with a tooth-pick or a paste-stick, the 
work can be done cleanly. 

Printing and Writing 

The six-year-old children will surely be able to 
print the text under the picture; some of the more 
skilful will write it. The older ones should be ex- 
pected to write out at home the leading facts of the 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 127 

story, on the blank page opposite the picture, thus 
coming a step closer to the more advanced work of 
the higher grades. Also, the older child should be 
asked to write out his ideas relative to the applica- 
tion of the lesson truth to his own life, thereby coor- 
dinating more closely the Sunday-school teaching and 
everyday experience. 

An idea of sand table work in the kindergarten 
was given in the preceding chapter in connection with 
the teaching of the Easter lesson. It is not nearly so 
generally useful in the lower grades as drawing and 
mounting pictures, for example, and may indeed be 
dispensed with altogether until later. 

Dramatic Tendency Utilized 

Besides the oral and graphic forms of self-expres- 
sion noted, there is also dramatic representation of 
the lesson story, and of the lesson truth in various 
games and plays. Our ideas must be clear and per- 
sistent if they are to realize themselves in conduct. 
By utilizing the play instinct and the impulse to 
imitate, lessons of great interest and social impor- 
tance are indelibly written upon the minds of even 
the smallest children, and, at the same time, the 
foundation of useful habits is laid. Psychologists tell 
us that the first step toward the attainment of a de- 
sired mental state is the putting-on of the outward 
signs or appearance of it: if you wish to feel cheer- 
ful, wear a cheerful smile and manner, and before 
long the drooping spirit will succumb to the uplifted 



128 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

corners of the mouth. The same principle is at work 
whenever the child engages in imitative plays. 

The dramatic tendency is well defined as early 
as the third year, and continues all through life; but 
it is probably at its climax between the years of four 
and seven. Children who are too young to do any 
but the very simplest forms of handwork are able to 
imagine themselves branches waving in the wind, the 
dove returning to the ark, the caterpillar weaving its 
cocoon and bursting into new life as a butterfly. If 
words and music can be added to the action, so much 
the better. The words will awaken and stimulate 
thought, the action will interpret and make real what 
might otherwise not be understood, and the music 
will help to bring about that rhythm of body and 
mind that is favorable to the cultivation of the higher 
emotions. Even the primary child likes the right 
kind of motion-song, and to act out a favorite Old 
Testament story. In the Primary Department of St. 
Bartholomew's Parish House Sunday-school, New 
York City, after the story of the Crossing of the 
Jordan had been told, all the children marched around 
the room singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers." They 
were led by the banner-class, representing the priests, 
carrying banners and a small model of the ark. This 
exercise took only a few minutes, but was entered 
upon with so much enthusiasm that the children must 
remember the lesson as a result of it. All stories 
cannot be treated in the same way, nor is it desirable 
that they should be ; but if the Sunday-school session 
is ordinarily too short for this dramatic play, could 
it not be introduced as a most appropriate diversion 



THE LEARNING PROCESS 129 

for the Christmas or Easter party? Certainly there 
could be no better way of psychologizing the subject- 
matter of the Snnday-school lesson, or aiding the 
child to experience it for himself, than to let him 
assume the part of a character in the story ; for when 
he adopts the attributes and activities of others his 
sympathetic nature expands, and his understanding 
is enlarged. Constructive imitation and the assim- 
ilative instinct working together lead to a realization 
of the higher truth and beauty of life long before 
words can be found to express these things. 

Undoubtedly there are other kinds of handwork 
and other expressional activities than those enumer- 
ated here that can be used to advantage in individ- 
ual cases, and many of those mentioned may be en- 
tirely inapplicable to the majority of schools. What 
each class will do must depend upon the judgment of 
the teacher. That some sort of self -expressive work 
be included in the programme is imperative, but the 
danger of over-emphasizing it must be guarded 
against, lest its very purpose be defeated. Where too 
much or too complicated work is attempted, haste 
and confusion will drive out simplicity and serenity. 
A proper balance between the various parts of the 
programme must be maintained; and the handwork, 
like every other detail, must be subordinate to the 
whole for the sake of unity. 



CHAPTER XIV 

SELF-EXPRESSION IN SERVICE AND 
IN WORSHIP 

WHEN" the Sunday-school tries to cultivate in 
its children a spirit of service, and of respon- 
sibility to humanity and to the Heavenly Father, it 
has as a foundation the simple home relations, and 
the affection for brothers and sisters, for father and 
mother. Story, and talk, and song, are used to direct 
attention to the virtues of helpfulness, of gratitude, 
of generosity, forgiveness, and sympathy, each of 
which is to be made so attractive to the child that 
he will unconsciously feel a desire to exercise it. And 
the moment in which he feels this desire is the time 
to turn his energies into channels through which he 
can carry out his noble impulses. 

Applying the Lessons 

We may begin by letting him point out to us 
the ways in which he can be helpful in the home; 
the little acts he can perform for parents, such as 
running errands, picking up his toys, amusing the 
baby, and even such difficult things as keeping quiet 
and out of mother's way when she is busy or ill. If 
the subject of the lesson has been gratitude, he can 
be led to see that, though he may be unable to show 



SELF-EXPRESSION 131 

his appreciation of his parents' care and loving-kind- 
ness in some big way, he can do so by being obedient 
and thoughtful for others. We shall have to teach 
him, through his own frequent need for forgiveness, 
not to cherish resentment against others. If by any 
chance there is a little quarrel or unpleasantness be- 
tween children in our presence, we shall need to sift 
the matter, to the end that the child at fault may 
be led to see his wrong-doing, and to make reparation. 
In many little ways we can teach consideration for 
others and encourage the sympathetic nature to ex- 
press itself. 

The Font Roll 

But the obligations of the child extend beyond 
the persons in his immediate family and circle of 
friends, and this is a fact that the efficient Sunday- 
school never fails to bring out. It uses the Font Eoll 
as a connecting link between home and school, and 
afterward between these spheres and all the world 
outside. The doing side of the Font Eoll appeals 
equally to kindergarten and primary children, who 
will be eager to bring in the names of baptized 
brothers and sisters, cousins, and little friends for 
enrollment, just as soon as they become thoroughly 
familiar with the idea. The service of admission, 
which should include simple prayer and song, heard 
from time to time, keeps interest alive, and when at 
last the Font Roll baby is received into the kinder- 
garten circle, he is looked upon as a brother by all 
present. 

It is customary for the school to send birthday 
cards to the babies, and in some schools to remember 



132 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

them at Christmas ; and mothers are always cordially 
invited to bring them to all special children's serv- 
ices^ and to the Christmas and Easter parties when 
these are held. Gradually, the children's sympathies 
can be extended to embrace babies outside their ac- 
quaintance, and interest in missions can be developed 
through stories of little children in many lands, while 
the older boys and girls will like to hear about the 
deeds of brave men and women who are giving life 
and health for the sake of advancing God's Kingdom. 

Children's Gifts 

The various opportunities for giving that every 
school affords its children ought to be an outgrowth of 
their interest in some specific person or cause. When- 
ever possible, they should have a voice as to the ex- 
penditure of the money they bring, and as to the dis- 
tribution of toys and other things they give. If this 
cannot be permitted, their sympathies must be gained 
for whatever purpose the gifts are to be used. 

In the majority of schools there are no children 
who can give absolutely nothing: they will be able 
to give either of their money or of their time and 
service. All must learn that, while it is a great 
privilege to be able to give much, God wants not the 
gift but the giver; that the child who has little but 
gives that cheerfully, at the cost of his own pleasure 
or comfort it may be, is doing his part. No child is 
too young to learn the joy of sharing a toy, a book, 
or a stick of candy, or even his play-time to do an 
errand, for the sake of others, but we cannot teach 
him this by forcing him to give up what he wants to 



SELF-EXPRESSION 133 

keep. Suggestion, not force, must be used. It would 
be a very excellent thing in many ways if even the 
youngest children were given a tiny allowance, and 
then encouraged by their parents to make suitable use 
of it. In this way the harm of going to father or 
mother for the Sunday-school offering would be over- 
come, and giving would mean more to the child than 
it does in most cases at present. 

Special Gifts 

In some schools it is the custom to celebrate 
Thanksgiving by allowing the children to bring food 
and clothing a few days before, for distribution where 
they may be needed. In others, a Christmas "Man- 
ger Service" is held, when all the children of the 
school are invited to bring gifts nicely wrapped and 
tied with neat cord or ribbon, these to be given later 
to children in hospitals and elsewhere. The money 
offerings at Christmas and Easter are very often de- 
voted to missions, and whether the pupils approach 
them in the right spirit or not depends very much 
upon the teacher. Giving should be made as personal 
a matter as possible: if the child can make a gift 
with his own hands, its value is enhanced, to him. 
Perhaps the handwork of the day can be done with 
some special object in view, such as giving pleasure 
to the absent members of the class. In one kinder- 
garten visited by the writer the children received col- 
ored papers, mounting-cards, scissors, and paste. The 
flowers they cut out and mounted were sent to the 
children (absent members of the class) designated by 



134 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

each, little worker. At Christmas the handwork can 
take the form of gifts for Mother and Father. 

Stimulating the Missionary Spirit by Giving 

A certain primary class interested in a young 
Chinaman, towards whose education a part of their 
money offerings was being used, collected picture 
post-cards of buildings and parks in the city in which 
their school was located, to be sent to him. On some 
of these little personal messages and bits of descrip- 
tion were written by the children. In this way their 
sense of stewardship was heightened. 

Or the children may bring flowers, or money 
with which to buy flowers, for the sick and aged; but 
it would not be reasonable to expect this of all par- 
ishes, or of all the children in many parishes. A 
recent textbook offers a very nice suggestion in this 
connection. If the kindergarten and primary rooms 
will accommodate window-boxes, bulbs should be 
planted in them in the fall. When the plants flower 
they may either be used in decorating the church or 
be sent immediately to the sick. In any case the care 
of them should devolve upon the children so far as 
possible. 

The Birthday Celebration 

In most Sunday-schools birthday celebrations have 
come to enjoy much popularity. Being the center of 
things is more or less gratifying to human nature 
generally, and the pleasure of lighting candles, and of 
putting the pennies in the birthday-bank, while the 
other children count them aloud one by one, has its 



SELF-EXPRESSION 135 

effect ; but if the matter be worked up sufficiently, in- 
terest will be focused on the giving side. One dear 
little girl became so enthusiastic that she brought a 
dime to give on her grandmother's birthday. She 
said, "I asked Grandmother if I might give it, and 
then ran out of the house for fear she would change 
her mind." In one kindergarten the suggestion that 
the birthday offerings be used to purchase flowers for 
sick members of the class was warmly received; and 
the gifts of a primary class have recently been used 
to help buy luncheons for a little crippled girl in one 
of the New York City schools. Other classes might 
choose to contribute towards the support of a hospi- 
tal bed for children, or to help defray the expenses of 
maintaining a child in a missionary school. 

Learning to Rejoice with Others 

There is a side of sympathy that is somewhat 
neglected. Very few people will turn an absolutely 
deaf ear to all appeals for help for those in distress, 
but many of us find it difficult to rejoice whole- 
heartedly in the good fortune of others. The birth- 
day service of prayer and praise should counteract 
this natural tendency to selfishness somewhat, be- 
cause it asks all the children to join in thanksgiving 
for blessings bestowed upon one of their number. 

The Child's Faith 

The part of imagination and imitation in mould- 
ing the child's outward life to conformity with moral 
ideals is easily seen; and his suggestibility, his sim- 
ple faith and willingness to believe, his trustfulness 



136 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

and love, are just as plainly the traits that make it 
the most natural thing in the world for him to turn 
to the Heavenly Father. One night there was a fire 
in a certain tenement house. The excitement and 
noise usual in such cases prevailed, but a little child 
remained quietly in her bed. Later, when everyone 
expressed astonishment over the fact, she said, "I 
was not afraid. Heavenly Father was taking care of 
us. Nothing could hurt us." 

Praise and Reverence 

This consciousness of God is one of the ways in 
which childish faith expresses itself. It finds voice 
also in prayer and thanksgiving, in praise and in 
offerings. 

All the teaching of the Sunday-school should tend 
to one ultimate conclusion — the realization of the fact 
by the children that God is present with them at all 
times, that He is interested in their every act, that 
they can do all things in His name, no matter how 
slight the service may be; that when they feed the 
birds or water the thirsty plant they are helping Him. 
With reference to their offerings of every nature, they 
should be taught that all that they enjoy comes from 
God, and the act of giving should be connected with 
this idea by their singing or saying a brief Doxology 
that acknowledges the Heavenly Father as the Giver 
of all good gifts. The words should, of course, be so 
well understood that they come from the child's lips 
with all the force of a spontaneous and original utter- 
ance. 

The childish feeling of wonder is easily con- 



SELF-EXPRESSION 137 

verted into reverence if the Sunday-school practice 
and ideals are what they should be. The quiet mo- 
ment following the talk, in which the child's thoughts 
have been dwelling on the wonderful creations of the 
Father, is full of significance to his spiritual nature, 
for the feeling of awe lingers and exerts its influ- 
ence, even if he does not actively think of anything. 

Prayer 

Thanksgiving and prayer should be related to 
the child's present life, and to the seasons and the 
lessons that are being taught. In a few words the 
teacher will seek to express the feelings of gratitude 
to the Heavenly Father that have been awakened by 
what has gone before in the programme, and will 
ask for His continued love and care. Eeverently and 
distinctly the children may repeat after her, line by 
line, the simple words. Set prayers also may be used, 
if they are expressions of feelings natural to children 
of the age using them. The Lord's Prayer is suitable 
for all children able to say the words, even though 
they may not understand all of it ; for its beauty and 
impressiveness appeal to them, and its meaning will 
gradually unfold itself to their developing minds. 

The Attitude Toward Prayer 

"We want our children to feel that when they pray 
they are talking to God; that their joys and sorrows 
are of real moment to Him, and that they can turn to 
Him for help in their moments of temptation. But 
they are not to acquire the idea that He is to be found 
in Sunday-school and Church exclusively. They need 



138 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

to be taught prayers and songs of praise they will 
like so much that they will use them freely at home. 
In many cases our influence will be alone in urging 
them to remember prayers night and morning, and 
we may have to remind them frequently of this duty. 

If we can awaken in them so much love for their 
Sunday activities that they will think and speak of 
them during the week; if their admiration for the 
characters studied on Sunday can be carried over into 
a desire to hear more about them on the other days, 
and to live like them always, we may feel thankful 
indeed. 

But the final result is not in our hands. The hus- 
bandman can do no more than prepare the soil, plant 
the seed, water the sprouting plants, and remove such 
choking weeds as may flourish among them. Our 
human plant also needs the sunshine of God's grace, 
and to Him belongs the harvest. 



INDEX 



A. 

Aim of Sunday-school Teach- 
ing, 54, 68, 118. 
Animism, 31, 50. 
Apperception, 98. 
Association of Ideas, 111, 112. 
Attention, 102, 103. 

B. 

Benevolence, Money Offer- 
ings, 132. 

Other Gifts, 133, 134. 

Bennett, Arnold XIV, Birthday 
Celebration, 134. 

Boynton, Charles H. XIV, 
Blackboard, Use of, 94, 95. 

Brown, Dr. Marianno C, 96. 

C. 
Causal Idea, 35, 36. 
Child, Contents of Mind of, 99. 
Credulity of, 19. 
Cruelty in the, 43. 
Gradual Development of, 

73. 
Helpfulness Instinctive in, 

46. 
Restlessness in, 14. 
Selfishness in, 42. 
Study of, 4. 
Suggestibility of, 19. 
Superstitions of, 41. 



Sympathy in Young, 45, 
135. 
Childish Ideas of God, 51. 
Children's Interest in the 

Bible, 53. 
Circle Talk, Value of, 100, 106. 
Classroom, Influence of, 93, 

95. 
Collecting Instinct, 9, 41. 
Curriculum, Suggestions as to, 
56. 

D. 

Dr. Dawson Quoted, 53, 54. 
Discipline, 116. 

Dramatic Tendency, 127, 128. 
Drawing, 123. 

E. 

Education Defined, 118. 
Environment, Influence of, 99. 
Expressional Activities Relat- 
ed to the Lesson, 120, 121. 

F. 

Faith, Natural to the Child, 

136. 
Fear, 38. 

Sources of, 39. 
Font Roll, 131. 
Froebel XIV, 11, 14, 70, 72. 



140 



GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 



Games in Sunday-school 

Teaching, 65, 72. 
God, Childish Ideas of, 50, 51. 
Grading, 12. 
Growth in Height, 2. 
In Weight, 2. 

H. 

Habit, 118. 
Dr. Hall, 99. 
Handwork, 65, 116. 

As Test of Knowledge, 
120. 

Forms of, 122, 129. 
Heredity, 6. 

Houses of Childhood, 69, 70. 
Dr. Hyde, 102. 
Hymns Taught, 112, 114, 115. 

I. 

Imagination, 15, 24, 29, 107. 

And Ideals, 31-33. 

And Fears, 40. 
Imitation, 7, 15, 17-19, 129. 

Age of, 11. 

And Morality, 19. 
Impulse, 119. 

Age of, 10. 

Basis of Habit, 119. 
Infancy, Defined by Biology, 3. 
Instinct, Age of, 10. 

Basis of Habit, 119. 

Defined, 7. 

Nascent, 9. 
Instinct of Ownership, 42. 
Instincts, Sequence of, 8. 
Interests Indicated by Spon- 
taneous Activities, 102. 



Instruction — Material in the 
Kindergarten, 56. 

In the Primary Dept., 55, 
56, 57. 

J. 

James, 7, 38, 104, 119. 

Johnson, George Ellsworth, 
16. 

K. 

Kindergarten, Method of, 70. 
"Playthings" of, 71, 72. 



Lesson, The — 

Application of, 130. 
Developed by Question- 
ing, 82. 
Taught Through the 

Story, 82. 
Time for Teacher's Prep- 
aration of, 78. 
Love, Positive Force, 45. 
"Lying," 43. 

Fear as Cause of, 44. 
Other Causes of, 44. 

M. 

Memory, 24. 

Tenacity of, 26. 
Types of, 25. 
Methods of Teaching, 67. 
Mrs. Meynell, 30. 
Models, 94, 106, 107, 111. 
Montessori, 69, 70, 104. 
Moral Aspect of the Senses, 21. 
Moral Nature Developed by 
Doing, 119. 



INDEX 



141 



O. 

Objective Methods Required, 
23, 73. 



Parable of the Sower, 108. 
Pictures, 94, 95, 106, 125, 126. 
Play, 14-17. 

Imitative Instinct Shown 
in, 128. 
Poster-Making, 121, 123. 
Praise, 136. 
Prayer, 137. 

Preparatory Talk, 100, 106. 
Printing, 126. 
Programme, 79. 

Q. 

Question, The, 81, 101. 

Used in Developing the 
Lesson, 110. 

R. 

Recall, 27. 

Recapitulation Theory, 4. 
Reverence, 136. 

S. 

Self-Activity, 13. 

Key-note of Modern Meth- 
ods, 69. 
Self-Expression, Dramatic Ten- 
dency Means of, 127. 

Forms of, 121. 

In Giving, 132. 

In Play, 15. 

In Service, 130. 

Pictures Related to, 126. 



Test of Knowledge, 120. 
Three Phases of, 119. 
Senses, 20. 

Their Bearing upon Mor- 
als, 21. 
Touch Proper, Sight and 
Hearing, 22. 
Space Ideas, 28, 57. 
Special Days in Sunday-school, 

56, 58, 111, 133. 
Steps in Teaching, 80, 106. 
Stevenson, R. L., 44. 
Story, The, 82, 83. 

Atmosphere of, 85, 86. 
Essential Elements of, 88. 
First Step in Preparation 

of, 83. 
Moral Effect of, 109. 
Objections to Memoriza- 
tion of, 90. 
Question Used to Develop, 

110. 
Title of, 88. 

Value of "Picturing," 121. 
Story Interests of Children, 

52. 
Story-telling, Devices Used in, 
89. 

Gestures an aid in, 93. 
Sully, 26, 35, 42, 124. 
Sunday-school Teaching, Aim 
of, 54, 68, 118. 

Qualifications Necessary 

for, 75. . 
Spiritual Preparation for, 
74. 
Symbolic Age, 23. 



142 GOD'S LITTLE CHILDREN 

T. W. 

Teacher's Personality, 75. Will, 104. 

Temperamental Types, 5. Worship, 120. 

Textbooks, 60-66. Writing, 126. 

Time-Ideas, 28, 57. 






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